Beating Austerity in the Kitchen (More or Less)

Sfoof and Goodbye

2011-09-24T03:48:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-17T02:29:00.000-07:00

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...

Aunt Bill's Biscuits

2011-09-10T06:00:00.000-07:00

My Aunt Bill’s real name was Willie, but she was seldom called that. She was the oldest of my three maiden aunts, the others being Frances and Kathleen, all of whom loomed very large in the lives of their nephews and nieces. Kathleen, the youngest, ventured farthest afield both before and after getting a degree in library science, and spent much of her working life as a librarian at the University of Southern Illinois. Frances, with a PhD in English Literature from Louisiana State University, returned to her family home in Ruston and taught at Louisiana Tech. Bill ran the university nursery school and helped civilize generations of young Rustonians.

My maiden aunts were always trying to improve my mind and raise my standard of culture, which could be very annoying at times, but eventually left me with much to be grateful for. At least one of their early nephew-amelioration initiatives had an unintended and unfortunate result. When I was four they gave me a set of watercolors and a book about a gorgeous yellow-stripped tomcat. At the time, we had a non-descript outdoor white cat who was mostly interested in chasing barn mice. After reading the book, I decided our poor tom could use a bit of enhancement. I only managed to paint a few bright yellow stripes on his tail with my new watercolors before he noisily fled and was never seen again. (There were several other barns nearby and the cat probably found a home in one where he was in no danger of being molested by a lunatic child.)

The Aunts, as we always called them - almost as if they were a sports team - all had strong personalities and there is so much that I could write about them that I scarcely know where to begin. But Bill was the best cook of the lot and so I will start with a recipe for biscuits adapted from her copy of The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book that was found and sent to me by my cousins Stephen and Kathleen Duplantier, outstanding cooks in their own right.

Leaving southern Louisiana to spend four boring hours in the back seat of a Plymouth while driving up to the red clay hills and piney woods of northern Louisiana, where my grandparents and aunts lived, was never an unalloyed pleasure. There were things about visiting Ruston that I enjoyed, but my aunts had strongly held, sometimes contradictory, ideas about how a child should be raised and a visit to their home on” Presbyterian Hill” in Ruston was always stressful. . I never knew when suddenly one or all of them would proclaim some well-meaning dogma that would destroy my peace of mind. I particularly remember the time they found me reading a comic book and raised holy hell, telling me that I was ruining my mind and polluting my soul by wasting time on such trash. Aunt Kathleen, the librarian, who had the highest decibel level of the three, ranted on and on until I was a nervous wreck, and remained one until we were safely back in laissez-faire Lafayette.

But the food was always delicious and helped soothe my nerves. The fried chicken was sublime and there were luscious pickled peaches and fresh peach ice cream that I remember eating in an arbor covered with wisteria vines in the back yard. There were delicate “sand tarts” made from an ethereal shortbread, and there were always the light, crisp, and delicious biscuits with lots of butter and cane syrup. “Take two and butter them while they’re hot,” was a family saying, but who could stop at just two?

My cousin Kathleen (who was named after our Aunt Kathleen) vividly

remembers the Fletcher sisters' tradition of baking powder biscuits and how they cut them out with a small biscuit cutter that made half-dollar size or even smaller biscuits. Cousin Kathleen’s mother, Sarah (the only one of the sisters to get married) was also a formidable biscuit maker and had definite opinions about them. For example: she maintained that “drop biscuits” were “déclassé because they showed an unwillingness to roll and cut biscuits properly.”

Cousin Kathleen’s husband, Stephen, remembers Aunt

Frances

daintily eating Aunt Bill's small biscuits. “Because they were tiny, there would be no uncouth biting into a large biscuit and then putting the biscuit with a big curved bite-mark back on the plate. Also there would be less possibility of crumbs falling or, even worse, sticking to the lips and the sides of the mouth.”

Stephen and Kathleen also remember Sarah and Aunt Bill describing the proper mixing technique for biscuits: “All the dough must be removed from the bottom and sides of the bowl and incorporated into the biscuits. There must be absolutely no waste! No man would marry a woman who wasted biscuit dough. It would indicate a careless woman who was probably careless about other things, as well.” (Sarah was the only one of the sisters who seems to have profited from this adage.)

This is my adaptation of my Aunt Bill’s version of biscuits. I made them yesterday morning and they were almost as good as I remembered hers to be.

Preheat a conventional oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit (a convection oven to 375 degrees )

Ingredients:

2 cups organic all-purpose flour

4 teaspoons of baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon of unsalted butter

1 tablespoon of Crisco

1 cup of 2% milk

About three drops of white vinegar

1 tablespoon of melted butter

A board generously sprinkled with flour on which to roll out the flour

A rolling pin

A baking sheet or pan well- greased with cooking oil or melted butter or spayed with a product like Pam.

Chill in the fridge the flour, baking powder and the bowl they are to be mixed in for at least half an hour before making the biscuits. (A tip from my cousin Stephen!)

Mix the dry ingredients and sift them twice. If you do not have a real sifter, you can accomplish this by putting the flour and baking powder and salt through a large sieve with the help of a spoon (see photograph) into a large measuring cup, then back into the bowl.

Cut the butter and Crisco into small pieces and gently work them into the dry mixture with your finger tips. Gradually add the milk and vinegar and mix it with a broad-bladed knife to produce a soft dough. Do not overwork.

Put the lump of dough on the floured board, pat it down and lightly roll until the dough is about ¼ inch thick. Use a small circular cutter (an egg cup worked for me) and cut out the biscuits.

Arrange them on a baking sheet or in a pan so that they do not touch. Brush them with the melted butter.

Put the biscuits in the fridge for about ten minutes before putting them in the 450 degree oven.

Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, carefully watching, until they are golden brown.

Serving suggestion. When biscuits are cool enough to touch, slit them with a knife and insert a smidgen (or more) of red pepper jelly in each one.

Makes about 24 tiny biscuits. If you end up with fewer, your biscuits are too large.

The white barn cat and I, before my creativity spoiled our relationship,

as photographed by my sister, Lorraine, for her high school chemistry class.

My Aunts Bill and Kathleen striding away from a tour bus in an unidentified city on one of their many trips. All three aunts loved to travel and most summers they were off to Europe or destinations more exotic. When they were in their eighties, they spent a month on an extensive trip around the world. During this last long adventure, Aunt Kathleen sent me a post card from Venice that read: “We loved Venice. It wasn’t nearly as dirty as India.”

Aunt Kathleen and Aunt Frances on a cruise where pink leis and pink and white plastic hats are deemed de rigueur, though they do not seem entirely convinced.

Aunt Frances and Aunt Bill with Lonzo who was abandoned by his parents in Ruston when he was an infant. The Aunts saw to it that he was always fed, clothed, educated, and loved, and in their old age he repaid their kindness and devotion by diligently looking after them. At Aunt Bill’s burial in Ruston’s Greenwood Cemetery, at her request, so she could be sure it was done properly, he put the first shovel of dirt into the grave.

An improvised sifter.

A Vieux Paris porcelain egg cup, an ideal biscuit cutter for making tiny biscuits that can be ingested in one decorous bite.

The second batch of tiny biscuits, brushed with melted butter and ready to go in the oven. They were perfect.

The first batch of biscuits on a Limoges plate just as my aunts might have served them,

though the errant crumb, upper right, would have been met with a frown of disapproval.

I cut out this first batch with a demi-tasse which made the biscuits a little too large.

The second batch, cut with an egg cup, were exactly the right size, but they

disappeared before I had a chance to photograph them.

Viola Woodward and "A Mess of Greens"

2011-09-03T06:25:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-07-30T03:10:00.000-07:00

I seem to have been blessed with a non-addictive personality, though I have not always considered it a blessing. When I was an undergraduate at Tulane, I repeatedly tried to start smoking cigarettes, but kept forgetting to buy them. At one point, I remember thinking that my inability to keep on with smoking, a conscious decision, was the indication of a serious personality flaw. I was afraid I would never be able to persevere at anything.

I suppose this same trait has also kept me from becoming dependent on alcohol or drugs, and had my parents been more aware of it, it would have saved them a lot of worry. My mother’s older brother, Will, was a charming alcoholic and probably because I looked so much like him when he was a child – in our baby pictures we are indistinguishable – they were always afraid I would follow in his often staggering footsteps. One of my father’s sisters told me this after my parents both were gone and it explained why they carefully kept him away from me when I was growing up, though he lived not that far away in Texas City, Texas.

I remember seeing my Uncle Will only once when I was young; it was at a cousin’s wedding where he was tipsy and smiling and patted me gently on the head. I was a teenager when he died and left me a complete set of Balzac in translation and to my mother enough money to enable her to buy a new Buick. (Heretofore we had always had Plymouths.)

He was an interesting and sympathetic character and I have always regretted that I did not get to know him.

Uncle Will played the trumpet and had run away to join a circus band when he was a teenager growing up in Ruston, Louisiana, the oldest child of my grandmother, the widow of a Presbyterian minister who was also raising four young girls. One of them, my Aunt Maud, never spoke to Will again, and the others all looked down on him. He later read for the law, married, and set up a practice in Texas City, but in my parents’ eyes, he didn’t amount to much. I never met his wife who painted landscapes and wrote one novel, the manuscript of which she lost before she had a chance to show it to anyone. My mother inherited one of her undistinguished paintings. An eight by twelve inch oil on canvas, framed in a cheap gold frame, it was of a crooked, skinny tree growing amid some brush. Mother hung it in the parlor to which the artist had never been invited.

I believe that the closest thing I have had to an addiction is my devotion to pasta which crept up on me during the time I lived in Italy. I vaguely remember at some point during my Italian years growing tired of it and avoiding it for a while, then slowly I began to really enjoy it again and soon a meal without it seemed incomplete.

My partner, John, does not share my passion for pasta. He has, in fact, developed a mild aversion to it because I used to make it for us so often. These days I usually have pasta only on those rare occasions when John and I do not have lunch together and I get to fix a bowl of it for myself.

This is my favorite recipe for “pasta for one.” It is tasty, simple, and fast. And the recipe can easily be expanded to serve many more.

Six to eight ounces of pasta, whatever one has on hand. “Penne rigate” are good because the ridges in the pasta hold the sauce well. The last time I used “racchette” pasta in the form of little tennis rackets, which also worked very well. The only brand of pasta I use, however, is de Cecco. It is always of high quality and the brand most of my Italian friends swear by.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a rolling boil and cook the pasta in it for however long the package says one should.

While the pasta is cooking, put three or four tablespoons of good olive oil in a large skillet and over a moderate heat gently sauté the following ingredients:

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 small jalapeno, seeded and minced

1 miniature sweet red or yellow pepper (a really tiny one), seeded and minced

About two inches of anchovy paste from a tube or three or four smashed anchovies

2 tablespoons of chopped green onions

¼ cup of chopped parsley

About a dozen turns of freshly ground black pepper

Salt to taste

Let the above simmer for a few minutes until everything is softened, being careful not to let it burn.

Set aside for garnish another ¼ cup of chopped parsley and 6 or 8 shredded sweet basil leaves.

When pasta is done, drain it and then toss it in the skillet until it is well covered with the mixture.

Turn into a bowl and stir in about half a cup of freshly grated Parmigiano and the rest of the chopped parsley and basil leaves. Serve at once.

One glass of red dry wine goes perfectly with this, especially if you are able to take an afternoon nap.

Following the example of my lucky French friends, I will be taking off the entire month of August. I hope you will come back to my blog in September for more stories and more recipes. Bonnes vacances!

Pasta for one

The Fleshpots of the East

2011-07-23T05:53:00.000-07:00

Istanbul in early spring, 1974. The bridge across the Bosphorus, connecting Europe to Asia, had just been completed a few months before when my brilliant, learned, and witty friend Timothy Verdon and I spent a week there.

I first met Timothy in early 1960s when he was a precocious undergraduate from Weehawken, New Jersey. He served as my assistant on a student ship on which I was directing an orientation program for students who were going to Europe for the summer or for a year of study. He kept the crossing lively with his surreal sense of humor and a series of practical jokes that he might not like to be reminded of today since he is Monsignor Timothy Verdon, celebrated scholar, television personality, a Canon of the Florence Cathedral, one of whose official titles is Director of the Office of Sacred Art and Ecclesiastical Cultural Heritage for the Archdiocese of Florence. However, he is still as well known for his wit as he is for his erudition, and justly so.

That spring in Istanbul almost forty years ago, we stayed in a modern and nondescript hotel near the bazaar. The window in my room opened onto a brick wall on which had been stenciled a black and white portrait of Ataturk who stared fiercely back at me each time I looked out the window.

Tim, who was either finishing or had just finished his PhD in art history at Yale, was an excellent traveling companion. He wore his learning very lightly and joyfully shared it. We visited all the important monuments of the city: Santa Sophia, The Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, the Archeological Museum, and a number of obscure ones.

One day we decided to take a bus across the newly opened bridge and spend a day exploring the eastern part of the city. We planned to wander around for a while, have lunch somewhere, and then, later in the afternoon, take a ferry back to the west. We thought it a good idea to make inquires first at the Istanbul Tourist Office located in the Hilton Hotel. “Could you recommend,” I asked the woman behind the desk, “a good place to have lunch on the other side of the bridge?” “Oh, no,” she gravely told me, “There are no suitable places for lunch in Asia.”

I was somewhat taken aback by her sweeping statement, but, as I recall, we did not find a place for lunch. We did have an interesting day poking around and looking at the architecture. As the sun was setting, we took a crowded ferry back to Europe.

We were very tired and very dirty when we got back to our hotel and I noticed in the lobby a flier extolling the merits of a Turkish bath that claimed to be the oldest in Istanbul. The list of past customers was impressive and included Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, writer and wife of the English Ambassador at Constantinople in the 18^th century, and Lord Byron in the 19^th. There were other famous bathers as well, but somehow those are the two who have remained in my memory.

The Cagaloglu Hammam was only a few blocks away, so we decided to give it a try. We paid the modest fee and were given huge towels and bars of soap and escorted into the vapors. We each had an attendant who scrubbed us so clean I thought my skin was coming off. And then we had vigorous massages. Mine was given by a pot-bellied Turk with a moustache who pummeled and pressed and rubbed vigorously until I was completely limp. As I was lying there almost comatose, suddenly a young man with long hair, wearing a leather jacket and jeans, arrived and enthusiastically introduced himself. He had, he said, recently inherited the Hammam and when he heard that there were two Americans in the bath, he was eager to meet us. His enthusiasm for Americans, it turned out, was the result of a year spent in Vermont on an exchange program sponsored by the Experiment in International Living. It had been, he told us, the best thing that had ever happened to him. And then, revealing the dark side of educational exchange, he announced that his time in America had inspired a plan to convert the ancient and venerable Cagaloglu into "a uni-sex sauna and kebab house.” I wonder if it ever happened. I certainly hope not.

Tim and I tried a number of different restaurants in Istanbul, from elegant to simple, and had some tasty meals with a variety of side dishes, but somehow we always ended up with a kebab of some sort. It seemed inevitable, inescapable, so much so that after a week of it Tim remarked, “The infamous fleshpots of the East seem to be filled mostly with shish kebab. “ As a memento of our trip he gave me a small cookbook entitled Turkish Cooking, which Tim with a pen subtitled “or – “The Pocket Fleshpot.”

Turkish Cooking was written by Irfan Orga, who, I have discovered, was a well known Turkish author and former fighter pilot from an ancient Ottoman family who lived in exile in London for many years. The book begins with a charming and informative preface that explores Turkish cuisine and the role it plays in Turkish life. The recipes are clearly written and simple to follow; there are about a dozen for various kebabs. It also has this sensible advice on their preparation:

Sliced green peppers, tomatoes and onions may be served as garniture but these must be grilled on separate skewers. If they are included on the meat skewer the meat becomes tough and this is why so many shish kebab dishes served in restaurants outside the Middle East are tough and unpalatable.

The following is an adaptation of the shish kebab that I hoped to prepare last evening, but our butcher could not supply the lamb, so I will have to try it another time. It sounds straightforward and delicious. As soon as the butcher can supply me with the right kind of lamb, I plan to try it.

Four skewers

2 lbs of leg of lamb removed from the bone and cut into 1 inch cubes

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

1 cup of dry white wine

1 teaspoon of salt

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Combine the wine, garlic and salt to make a marinade. Marinate the lamb in the mixture for 6 to 8 hours. Dry and place on skewers, allowing a ½ inch between each cube. Brush well with the melted butter and grill for 5 or 6 minutes, turning continuously.

The new owner of the Cagaloglu, with Tim standing behind me.

A steel engraving of the Cagaloglu Hammam made after a drawing by Thomas Allom (1804-1872), English artist and architect, showing what it must have looked like in the 1830s when Allom visited Turkey.

Chicken Fricassee (for Jane Davies)

2011-07-16T04:52:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-09T00:15:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-02T08:58:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-22T05:41:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-18T06:24:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-10T22:22:00.000-07:00

“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

2011-06-03T23:12:00.000-07:00

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

Modified "Les Vingt Quatre" Chicken and Sausage Gumbo

2011-05-28T01:24:00.000-07:00

In 1932, my mother and twenty-three of her friends in Lafayette, Louisiana, formed a social club which took on worthy projects. Even though their children referred to Les Vingt Quatre as The Vain Cats, they did a lot of good work in the community, establishing the first public library in Lafayette, and later buying the historic Mouton House, home of Alexandre Mouton, a pre-Civil War governor of Louisiana, and transforming it into a house museum. Much of the money for their projects came from the sale of a slender cookbook with a shocking pink cover called First, You Make a Roux. It contains very basic recipes from the club members (or very often their cooks) and is less than fifty pages long, but it has been a best-seller and gone through countless editions since it first appeared in 1954. The first time I tried to make a gumbo, it was to this volume that I turned. I have refined my gumbo over the years, and make a number of variations on it, but it evolved from the gumbo recipe in First, You Make a Roux.

Here is the basic and very simple way I make a chicken and sausage gumbo:

1 large chicken cut up into pieces (I often substitute a package of chicken thighs instead of a whole chicken.)

1 pound of andouille or a milder sausage, if preferred, cut into bite-sized pieces.

¼ cup of chopped cured ham

1 cup cooking oil

1 cup of all-purpose flour

2 cups chopped yellow onions

2 cups chopped celery

1 quarter of a chopped bell pepper

1 cup of chopped onion tops

I cup of chopped parsley

1 cup of chopped greens (kale or collards)

3 heads of chopped garlic

2 bay leaves

¼ cup of chopped cured ham

Three quarts water

Salt, pepper, and Tabasco to taste

Extra parsley and chopped green onions for garnish

Fresh gumbo filé (powdered sassafras leaves a tiny portion of which gives a distinctive flavor and also serves as a thickener. Easily found in stores in Louisiana; elsewhere it can be ordered online. Gumbo is not gumbo without it.)

Put a little oil in a deep pot and brown the chicken, sausage and ham well. Remove to a plate.

Add the rest of the oil to the pot and slowly stir in the flour over medium heat to make the roux.

Stir continuously until the flour is a dark brown, about 15 minutes, being careful not to burn it.

Add chopped vegetables to the oil that the chicken and sausage have been browned in and stir over medium heat until they have all softened.

Put browned chicken and sausage back into pot and add the 3 quarts of water and bay leaves and simmer for about 45 minutes. If made a day ahead of time and allowed to sit in the refrigerator overnight, the flavors “marry” and the gumbo is even better.

Add extra chopped parsley and green onion tops before serving, about a tablespoon in each bowl, and about a half-teaspoon of gumbo filé.

Serves 3 or 4

Les Vingt Quatre in 1954

Definitely Not Peggy Guggenheim’s Hungarian Goulash

2011-05-21T02:14:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-14T03:02:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-07T03:04:00.000-07:00

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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Arugula and Mirlitons

2011-04-30T03:53:00.000-07:00

Before it was arugula and found mostly in fancy food markets and right-wing slurs, it was roquette, a tangy staple in the Cajun diet.

My Cajun uncle, Claude Martin, a medical doctor in the small town of Welsh in southwestern Louisiana, almost always had a large bowl of roquette, together with olive oil and vinegar and salt and pepper, next to his place at the table. He helped himself to his favorite salad green and dressed it on his plate several times at each meal.

Crusty and outspoken, Uncle Claude was the most decorated soldier from Louisiana in the First World War. After the war, he married one of my mother’s sisters. Like my mother, my Aunt Ruth came from a strict Presbyterian upbringing in Protestant north Louisiana, and when she moved to Welsh to be a schoolteacher where she met her future husband, she was a card-carrying member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Shortly after their marriage, Uncle Claude was paying the household bills and came across one for her annual dues for the W.C.T.U.. He made out the check, but added the notation “She has a cellar full of liquor.” This was true because Uncle Claude was fond of wine with his meals and had a sizeable collection of good vintages. They had no further communication from the W. C. T. U..

I always held my Uncle Claude in high esteem, wary though I was of his gruffness and blunt manner, for I knew that were it not for him I would never have been born.

My mother was almost forty when I was conceived, and my parents were not sure that they wanted another child. By then they had three daughters and were not altogether pleased at the prospect of having a child eight years after their youngest. My oldest sister, who was fourteen at the time and had already lost her coveted only child status, was horrified at the idea. She was so embarrassed by mother’s swelling stomach that she refused to be seen in public with her. She undoubtedly approved when my parents decided on aborting me. I suspect that she lobbied for it.

Using as an excuse a rash my mother had suffered in the early stages of pregnancy, the family doctor in Lafayette signed an abortion order and my parents scheduled an appointment in New Orleans at a clinic where such procedures were done.

The morning that they were packing the Plymouth for the trip to have me out, my Uncle Claude just happened to have bank business in Lafayette and stopped by unannounced to see my parents.

He was, of course, a devout Catholic and when he learned about the scheduled abortion, he became furious. I am told that he shouted at my mother: “Fanny, if you have a rash, get in bed and take nothing but tea and toast, but you let that child be!” Such were his powers of persuasion that my parents called the clinic and cancelled the appointment. And later that year, to my oldest sister’s everlasting displeasure, I was born.

While I was growing up, I often heard my father repeat the tale of my near-abortion. It was one of his favorite stories. And the only passage from the Bible that I remember his reading aloud to me is the one in which Abraham is instructed by the Lord to sacrifice Isaac, his beloved son. Even when I was very young, the parallels were painfully obvious to me. Each time my father read it, a part of me was afraid that the Angel of the Lord just might not get there in time. No wonder I was a nervous child. As an adult, I sometimes wondered if I had only imagined the part about my father often reading me the story of Abraham and Isaac, but when I was at home for his funeral, I picked up his Bible, and it opened right to that passage.

After my Uncle Claude was gone from this earth and we no longer had big family meals in Welsh, I lost touch with roquette and had almost forgotten about it until it reappeared as arugula and began to be widely available in the 1990s.

Even when it was sneeringly referred to as a “yuppie lettuce,” I remembered it fondly and cherished it, and now that it is much easier to find, I have it almost as often as my Uncle Claude did. Below is one of my favorite ways to prepare and serve arugula, together with another popular Louisiana vegetable: the mirliton.

Mirlitons are known by several names: vegetable pear, alligator pear, and are most often seen in the U. S. with their Spanish name: chayote squash. They are best when picked fresh from the vine, as I used to do in southern Louisiana where they grow easily and abundantly. They have a delicate flavor some of which is lost in the Mexican imports found in American supermarkets. When buying them outside southern Louisiana, it is important to choose only those that look fresh and green. One can only hope that they have not been sitting for days and days in the vegetable bin.

Here is my recipe for arugula and mirliton salad. I think my Uncle Claude would like it.

Four medium sized mirlitons

½ pound of washed fresh baby arugula

1 cup of halved cherry tomatoes

For vinaigrette:

½ teaspoon Dijon mustard

1 tablespoons white balsamic vinegar

1 tablespoon of lemon juice

½ cup of extra virgin olive oil

½ teaspoon salt

5 twists of the pepper mill

Combine ingredients and whisk until mixture is smooth.

Slice mirlitons in quarters and place in a pot of boiling salted water. Gently boil for 25 or 30 minutes. Test with fork. When tender, remove from heat and drain. Allow to cool until they can be handled. Peel and put in a bowl with a cover. Sprinkle and toss with ½ of the vinaigrette. Chill overnight.

Next day, toss the arugula with the rest of the vinaigrette, combine with the mirlitons and cherry tomatoes and serve.

Serves 4

Helen Burdin's Cheesecake

2011-04-23T03:07:00.000-07:00

In the late 1950s, I served as a gunnery officer on the aircraft carrier USS Bennington (CVA 20), a ship that was then heavily staffed with young N. R. O. T.C. graduates like myself whose attitude toward the military was generally more frivolous than that of the Naval Academy men on board. The latter looked upon us with some disdain. For those who did not intend to follow a naval career, it was an unchallenging time to be in the service: after Korea and before Viet Nam. We spent much of our time steaming around and around Catalina Island doing air operations and gunnery exercises. While in port we often held open house and served lemonade and cookies to boy scouts and girl scouts and little old ladies. Once, off Catalina, the Bennington was the site of the world’s premier of the movie John Paul Jones and we were overrun with starlets, Troy Donahue, and a bitter ex-Miss France. Our ship was, we liked to say, the only aircraft carrier in the U. S. Fleet named after a girl’s college (actually, after a Revolutionary War battle.)

The Bennington’s home port was San Diego, but we sometimes steamed into San Francisco Bay and docked at the U. S. Naval Air Station at Alameda. Whenever we did, my sister Lorraine, a food chemist living in Berkeley, would meet the ship with two delicious cheesecakes she had made from a recipe she had brought with her from our native Louisiana.

Adapted from the Talk About Good cookbook, the recipe was originally from Helen Burdin, the wife of a Lafayette doctor who saved my life from an overdose of a sulfa drug when I was eight years old. The Burdins were also the parents of one of my oldest and dearest friends, Vaughan Burdin Simpson, who was at Newcomb while I was at Tulane, and who, with her husband, Amos, owned the apartment in Paris where my partner, John, and I stayed for many years on our twice-yearly buying trips to France. The Burdin family thus has given me more than any family other than my own: life, food, and shelter, not to mention decades of wonderful friendship and all the good things friendship brings.

Here is the cheesecake recipe:

1 package of vanilla wafers, crumbled

1 stick butter

3 eight ounce packages of Philadelphia cream cheese

1 ½ cups of sugar, divided in half

Juice of 1 large lemon

3 cups of sour cream

2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

3 large eggs

1 large spring-form cake pan

Melt butter and mix with crumbled vanilla wafers. Press the mixture firmly onto the bottom of the spring-form pan to form a crust.

With a hand-held mixer, blend the cream cheese, ¾ cup of the sugar, and the lemon juice. Add the three eggs and beat well. Pour the mixture onto the crust and bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. Remove from oven and let cool for 45 minutes.

Mix the sour cream, the other ¾ cup of sugar and the vanilla. Pour over the cooled baked mixture. Return to 350 degree oven and bake for another 30 minutes.

Remove from oven, let cool to room temperature and then refrigerate until thoroughly
chilled before serving.

Serves 8

Very Easy Beef Tenderlon and Thick-Cut Steaks

2011-04-16T05:21:00.000-07:00

John, raised on a beef farm in southwestern Virginia, is a dedicated carnivore. For health reasons, we do not eat nearly as much red meat as we used to, but when we do we always choose lean cuts of the best quality we can find and cook them carefully so that the cow from which they came will not have died in vain.

The advent of a real butcher shop just down the street from us in Fredericksburg has made it easier to find superior cuts of beef. The Olde Towne Butcher has become a Mecca for meat-lovers in the area. It also offers the highest quality pork, lamb, free-range poultry, a great variety of delicious sausages made on the premises, and fresh milk in glass bottles from near-by cows. Across the street from the local farmer’s market, it is certainly one of the blessings of living in Fredericksburg.

These are two of our favorite recipes.

Very Easy Beef Tenderloin

2 pound center-cut beef tenderloin, bound with twine

Extra virgin olive oil

Salt and pepper

Remove tenderloin from fridge and let it warm to room temperature.

Preheat Oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit

Rub salt and freshly-ground black pepper into all sides of the tenderloin and then coat it with the olive oil.

Place tenderloin on a roasting rack in a pan and place in oven.

After ten minutes, reduce heat to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and cook for another twenty-five minutes.

Remove from oven and let rest for ten minutes before slicing and serving. It should be medium rare to rare.

Sufficient for four normal people or two dedicated carnivores.

Thick-Cut Steaks

We have found this a good way to prepare steaks that are over an inch thick.

Take the steaks out of the fridge and let them warm to room temperature.

Rub salt and freshly ground pepper all over the steaks.

Pre-heat oven to 225 degrees.

Place steaks on a tray and place in the oven for 20 to 25 minutes.

Remove and brown in a non-stick pan over high heat for one minute on each side. They should be rare to medium rare.

John in his native habitat, near Glade Spring, Virginia

Matt & Ginja's Cold Corn Soup

2011-04-09T10:49:00.000-07:00

Matt and Ginja Moseley are among the most skilled, imaginative and dedicated cooks in southern Louisiana, where excellent cooks are the rule and not the exception. When we first became friends more than thirty years ago, they seldom left home without their Cuisineart. I remember one house party in the early 1980s at their beautiful house on Avery Island where they spent an entire day preparing the most delicious quenelles I had ever eaten. But by the time Matt and Ginja arrived at the table bearing their glorious creation, they were almost too exhausted to eat. Their guests were not. We feasted while they nibbled and looked somewhat dazed. I recently reminded Matt of this wonderful meal that had taken so much out of them “That was the first time we ever made quenelles, he told me. “And the last time.”

The passage of time has taught Matt and Ginja how to pace themselves and how to produce delicious food that is less demanding and that requires fewer hours in the kitchen. The following simple recipe is a good example:

Ingredients

Six ears of corn, cleaned & scraped off cobs

Scrape off juices with back of knife

1 ½ cup yellow onions, finely chopped

4 cloves finely chopped garlic

8 cups chicken stock

Sour cream or crème fraiche

Crabmeat or scallops to garnish

Sauté onions until translucent in enough olive oil to lightly coat bottom of heavy pot

Add garlic and sauté

Add corn & corn cobs

Add chicken stock

Simmer 25-30 minutes

Remove corn cobs

Puree mixture

Strain, season with kosher salt

Chill, add crabmeat or cooked scallops to garnish

Serves 6

Ginja pre-quenelles, Avery Island

David Swoyer’s Chicken Liver Pâté

2011-04-02T07:59:00.000-07:00

It was while running an art gallery in Louisiana that I decided to specialize in dead artists. The occasion that provoked this wise decision was a solo exhibition by a talented regional artist who painted abstractions inspired by Interstate Highway 10, and whose husband’s great wealth enabled her to play the role of a somewhat bohemian grande dame. In spite of the banal subject matter, the paintings were actually quite good. The problem was the artist, a demanding and imperious egomaniac who could not be pleased, even though we tried very hard to please her. Before her show, we did a great deal of publicity in print and on the radio, and sent out many invitations for a gala vernissage. John Bullard, the director of the New Orleans Museum of Art, who was courting the artist, not so much for her own work, but for her interesting collection of paintings by 20th century artists much better known than she, came for the weekend of the exhibition, and at one point was even helping us to wash windows while we were sprucing the place up. David Swoyer, a NOMA curator, himself a gifted painter, poet, and a brilliantly imaginative cook, was also on hand to help hang and light the show. After it was hung, and very beautifully, we thought, we invited a number of our best customers for a preview and soon had commitments on several of the works before the show began.

The gallery was in a beautiful garden setting and we had planned to have a few tasteful flower arrangements to complement the paintings, but the afternoon of the opening, a phone call from the artist, full of demands and warnings, included her instruction that there be no flowers or decorations of any kind that might distract the guests from the works of art.

The artist arrived half an hour before the opening. She was wearing an ankle-length black dress, a Paisley shawl draped over her head, and had smeared generous dabs of kohl under her eyes. She looked as if she were channeling Louise Nevelson.

The artist was not happy with the positioning of the pictures and insisted that some be re-hung and the lights re-adjusted, which we hurriedly did. For the rest of the evening, she had two facial expressions, alternating between sneer and scowl. The guests began to arrive and I introduced her to the several people who had seen and decided to purchase her work. She could not have been ruder to them. By the end of the evening, they were all having second thoughts, and eventually we sold nothing.

There was food and there was drink. I don’t recall if on this occasion we served a concoction we sometimes prepared for openings: a potent drink made with lots of vodka and a moderate amount of fruit juice that we called “Let’s-buy-another-little-picture-punch,” but the star of the evening turned out to be the delicious chicken liver pâté made and brought by David Swoyer. When the artist realized that the gathered crowd was speaking with more enthusiasm of David’s pâté than of her paintings, she became livid.

She caused a small scene before she left that evening, but it is the hysterical phone call that I received from her the next morning that I remember most vividly. During her rant, I picked up a Sotheby’s auction catalogue of 19th century paintings and drawings and began to thumb through it. It contained many lovely and interesting works, all by artists vanished and mute.

Here is David’s celebrated recipe:

8 Tbsp (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored, and cut into 1/2-inch dice

1/4 cup chopped shallots

1 pound chicken livers, trimmed

1/4 cup Calvados, applejack, brandy, or bourbon

1 tsp chopped fresh thyme or 1/2 tsp dried thyme

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1/4 cup heavy cream

Preparation:

Melt 1 Tbsp butter in a medium skillet over medium heat. Add the apple. Cook, stirring often, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the shallots and cook until the shallots and apple are tender, about 2 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and wipe out skillet with small .

Melt 1 Tbsp of the butter in the skillet over medium-high heat. Add 1/2 of the chicken livers and cook, stirring occasionally, just until are firm and slightly pink in the center when cut, about 6 minutes. Transfer to a bowl. Repeat with another Tbsp of butter and the remaining livers. Let cool completely.

Heat Calvados in a small saucepan over medium heat until warm. Carefully ignite the Calvados (preferably with a rolled taper of mediocre art). Let flame for about 20 seconds. Smother the flame. Remove from the heat.

Combine the chicken livers, apple and shallots, thyme, salt, and pepper in a food processor; pulse to blend. With the processor running, add the remaining 5 Tbsp s butter and the heavy cream. Transfer to a serving bowl, cover, and refrigerate until chilled, at least 4 hours, or overnight.

Serve chilled.

Yield: about 2-1/2 cups

David Swoyer, pleased with the success of his pâté.

Louisette Bertholle’s Shrimp Étouffée

2011-03-26T04:18:00.000-07:00

When I moved to Paris in the autumn of 1967, I found a convenient, comfortable and unspeakably dreary apartment near the Trocadero. Avenue d’Eylau, in the 16th Arrondissement, was considered a good address, and it was a short bus ride to my office on rue Pierre Charron, but the apartment itself was one of the most depressing places I have ever lived. The walls were painted a sickly green that suggested arsenic poisoning. My landlady had found oil cloth of the same hue, enlivened with a design of pink and yellow plumes, from which she had made drapes and covered all the furniture. The next year, when my lease was about to expire, I began to look for more cheerful place to live. One day I saw an ad in the International Herald Tribune for a room and bath in a large apartment on Avenue Victor Hugo, an even better address than Avenue d’Eylau. I answered it and soon found myself being interviewed by Louisette Bertholle, who recently had become slightly famous for having co-authored Mastering the Art of French Cooking with Julia Child and Simone Beck. The room and bath she advertised was one she had created for her mother within her apartment, and which, since her mother had passed away, had begun to rent out.

In 1968, Julia Child had not yet emerged as the culinary superstar she was soon to become, but I was aware of her and had a copy of the English edition of the cookbook, given me by my friend Samia who considered it her bible. In the course of my interview, Mme. Bertholle told me about the cookbook and the cooking school the three women had run in Paris, and had particular praise for Julia Child. “Recently we went to Taillevent and ordered salmon and only Julia’s palate was sensitive enough to detect that it was slightly off,”
she said. She told me several other interesting stories about Julia and Simca Beck and the fun they had with their school and how pleased they were that their book was proving to be a success.

Mme. Bertholle, who evidently decided that I would make a suitable tenant, eventually got around to telling me about the room which was beautifully furnished with 18th century antiques. I was, she told me, to make myself at home in the apartment and feel free to use the spacious and well-equipped kitchen that for a time had been the site of L’École des Trois Gourmandes. And then she said: “Julia will vacuum your room twice a week and change your sheets and towels once a week, and empty your trash.” I had a sudden vision of Mrs. Child arriving with a Hoover, but it turned out, of course, that Mme. Bertholle was actually referring to Julia, the Portuguese maid.

For the next eight months, until I found a lovely apartment in the Marais, I lived happily chez Madame Bertholle. She and her new husband, le Comte de Nalèche, were usually away at their country place in Loire, but at the end of each month they would spend a few nights in Paris. When she came to town, I would deliver my rent check and we would have a drink and a pleasant chat in the salon. I heard about her childhood in Charleston, South Carolina, as the daughter of a French diplomat. She told me how she had been mistreated by her first husband who had run off with a woman younger than their daughter. She also described her good fortune in meeting the elderly count who became her second husband and was kind to her.

Once while we were having our monthly tête-à-tête, she informed me that she had decided to write a cookbook of American food for the French and asked me for some typical Louisiana recipes. When she was next in Paris, I gave her a number of recipes for classic Louisiana dishes that a friend had kindly sent me. She approved of the gumbo recipe, but greeted the one for shrimp étouffée with a cry of horror because it called for sautéing the shrimp for 20 minutes. “Much, much too long,” she exclaimed, “They will be mush! Five minutes is enough, seven minutes at most.”

When I returned to Louisiana some years later and began to make shrimp étouffées, I followed her advice and never sautéed the shrimp for more than five minutes. She was right. It was the perfect time.

For roux: ½ cup cooking oil and ½ cup all purpose flour

2 lbs extra large raw shrimp, peeled and de-veined

4 pods of garlic, minced

4 large shallots, minced

1 cup chopped celery

¼ cup bell pepper, minced

½ cup green onion tops

1 cup V-8 juice

1 cup of dry white wine

1 teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon freshly ground pepper

Tabasco to taste

Before making the roux, start cooking 1 cup of long grain rice in 2 cups of boiling water with one teaspoon of salt, two bay leaves, and a tablespoon of olive oil or butter. The rice should be tender in about 20 minutes.

Make a light roux by lightly browning the flour and oil over a medium flame in a large skillet.

When the roux is light brown, add garlic, shallots, celery, bell pepper, and green onion tops and sauté until tender.

Add juice and wine and simmer while stirring over a medium flame for several minutes, until the sauce has reduced a bit.

Add shrimp and season with salt, pepper, and Tabasco to taste.

Simmer for about five minutes, or until the shrimp turn completely pink.

Let the mixture rest for a few minutes, then serve over boiled rice..

Serves 4

Countess Claire's Strawberry Ice with Orange Sauce

2011-03-19T03:25:00.000-07:00

Countess Claire von Oldekop-Auberjonois, recently transplanted from the south of France to Charleston, South Carolina, is the granddaughter of the celebrated Swiss Post-Impressionist painter, René Auberjonois (and a first cousin of the American actor of the same name.) Her grandfather was a close friend of Igor Stravinsky and designed the curtain, sets, and costumes for the world premiere in Lausanne in 1918 of his theater piece A Soldier’s Tale. Later, Countess Claire’s parents hid Stravinsky and his family from the Nazis in the basement of their home in the south of France while he was escaping to exile in the United States.

In the late 1960s, when I was living and working in Paris, Countess Claire was also there, working as a journalist. My office on the rue Pierre Charron was just a block away from her office, and we both took our morning coffee at the same nearby café, La Belle Ferronière.

About the time that a rich Canadian acquaintance took me to dine at the Hôtel Meurice and we sat next to Salvador Dali and his entourage, Claire went to Le Meurice to interview him. When Claire knocked at his door, Dali mistook her for a model he had hired and she ended up spending the evening in a swan tub filled with lilies reading Hegel in German to his guests. It was the beginning of a warm friendship with Dali which lasted until dementia and Dali’s wife, Gala, intervened.

Our paths must have crossed many times in Paris, but we did not meet until forty years later when she walked into our booth at the Charleston International Antiques Show and we soon became good friends.

Claire is an extraordinary cook (when she feels like it) and, while visiting us in Fredericksburg, has produced some wonderful dishes. One of our favorites is this simple and delicious Strawberry Ice with Orange Sauce:

For the strawberry ice:

1 ½ pounds of fresh cleaned strawberries, sliced for easy blending

2 cups of confectioner’s sugar

6 ounces of crème fraîche

1/3 pint of heavy cream

Juice of one lemon

For the orange sauce:

The grated zest of two large navel oranges

13.5 ounces of pure fresh orange juice

2 cups of confectioner’s sugar

½ cup of flour

2 egg yolks

4 egg whites.

In a large bowl, combine strawberries with sugar, crea, and lemon juice and beat until smooth. (Or you may do this in a blender.)

Put mixture in freezer.

In a large saucepan, place the flour, yokes and grated zest. Slowly add the rest of the orange juice while stirring the mixture over a medium low heat. Continue stirring until it becomes creamy, but not sticky. Remove from heat and continue stirring while it cools. Put in fridge to chill.

In another bowl beat the egg whites as stiff as possible and put in fridge to chill.

One hour before serving take strawberry mixture out of the freezer and put it into the fridge to soften slightly.

Just before serving blend the orange mixture with the egg whites.

To serve, put two large spoonfuls of the strawberry ice in individual bowls and cover with two large spoonfuls of orange and egg white mixture.

Serve immediately. Serves six.

Countess Claire in Fredericksburg

La Langue de La Vache de Madame Mouton

2011-03-12T01:19:00.000-08:00

When I was growing up in Lafayette, Louisiana, in the heart of Cajun country, it never struck me as odd that the most prominent family in town was named Mouton. It was only many years later, when I was explaining to a friend in France that the main street of my home town, according to local legend, had been laid out by the cows of Mr. Mouton as they ambled from his plantation to the Bayou Vermilion, that I realized that “the cows of Mr. Sheep,” did sound a little peculiar.

I grew up among many Cajun names: Arceneaux, Boudreaux, Broussard, Guidry, LeBlanc, Landry, but the name “Mouton” had a special resonance. Lafayette was founded by a Jean Mouton who had been expelled from Nova Scotia with his fellow Acadians by the British in 1754. On some early maps of the area, the town even appears as “Moutonville.”

Jean Mouton’s son, Alexandre, was the ninth governor of Louisiana, and Alexandre’s son, Alfred, was the town hero, a brigadier general in the Confederate Army.

A statue in white marble of General Mouton, high on a pedestal, his arms proudly crossed and his beard longer than Robert E. Lee’s, still stands in front of the old City Hall.

For much of my youth, the mayor of Lafayette was another of Jean’s descendants: Ashton Mouton, who rose to national prominence, not through his political acumen, but because in 1953 his twin daughters, born joined at their spines, were successfully separated at Oschner Clinic in New Orleans. It was the first time in my lifetime that someone from Lafayette made the national news. An article in Time Magazine gave all the details, and I believe there was also a photograph in Life.

The doctor who delivered me had the very English name of Hamilton, but he was married to one of the most formidable Moutons in the history of Lafayette. “Tante Ruth.” as she was known by all, was a pillar of the Catholic Church and was celebrated for both her piety and her strong personality. The Hamiltons lived not far from St. John’s Cathedral and Tante Ruth was thick with the bishop and all the other priests of the bishopric. She was generous with donations to the church and favors for the local clergy who were constantly saying prayers and masses for her soul. They also helped her with more worldly matters, like allowing her buy wine with a clerical discount from the same distributor who supplied sacramental wine for the Parish.

This led to an unfortunate event the summer that Tante Ruth decided, without mentioning it to her husband, to have a fine family tomb built for them in St. John’s Cemetery.

Shortly after the plans had been drawn up and the material ordered, she received a phone call from the railway express agent telling her that a shipment had arrived for her at the station. “That must be the marble for the tomb,” she thought, and requested that the agent have it delivered to her cemetery plot. It was not until she got another phone call from the cathedral sacristan telling her that three gravediggers were in a drunken stupor on her plot that she realized the shipment had not been the marble, but her monthly allotment of wine.

The marble eventually did arrive and the tomb was erected with the correct names and dates of birth prominently engraved on it, but Tante Ruth never got around to informing her husband of its existence. Then, shortly after the tomb was completed, one of her cousins died and was laid to rest in an adjoining plot. On a scorching August day under a blinding Louisiana sun, Dr. Hamilton looked up from the graveside service and was terribly shocked to see an impressive monument bearing his own name. He thought for a moment that he was having a heat stroke with accompanying delusions, and had he been of a more fragile constitution the new tomb might soon have been put to the use for which it was intended.

My favorite story about Moutons and Death (Les Moutons et la Mort), is the one noted genealogist and calligrapher, Franklin Mouton, tells of his cousin, Alice, the youngest daughter of one of the many large Catholic families in Lafayette. According to established tradition, the youngest female in a family was expected to remain unmarried in order to look after her parents as they declined into old age. Alice, pious and obedient, never protesting, did exactly what she was supposed to do. Later rather than sooner, her parents passed, and after they were gone, Alice, by then quite elderly herself, continued to live alone in the family home, never wearing anything but black, never leaving the house except to go to mass and the grocery store. For these modest excursions she always covered her head with a shawl and may have lightly powdered her nose, but probably did not even own a lipstick. The years went by, and finally Alice also departed this life. Her death occurred soon after the local funeral director to whom her body was entrusted had returned from a week-long cosmetics seminar in Chicago eager to display his newly acquired skills. When Alice’s relatives arrived for the wake, they thought they were in the wrong chapel. Alice was unrecognizable in her coffin. Her hair was permed and dyed red, her cheeks brightly rouged, her lips a slash of scarlet. “She looked,” Franklin said, “like a hooker in a box.”

Franklin’s late mother, Dot, was as famous for her cooking as her son is for his meticulously drawn genealogical charts. For special occasions, Dot made her specialty that sounds disgusting but was one of the most succulent and delicious dishes I have ever tasted: smothered beef tongue. Franklin recently told me that he never learned his mother’s recipe, but that he supposed that she slow-cooked it the way she did her pot roasts.

I have not yet cooked a beef tongue, and have no plans to do so, but should the fancy ever take me, the following recipe, adapted from several Cajun sources, is probably close to the way Dot Mouton prepared it, and is the one I would follow.

1 large beef tongue, about 1 or 1 ½ pounds

½ cup of salt and 1 tablespoon of salt

6 cloves of garlic peeled and sliced in two

1 chopped onion

12 peppercorns

2 bay leaves

Several dashes of Tabasco hot sauce

Scrub the tongue clean with a brush.

Put it in large pot of water with the half cup of salt and simmer for 2 hours.

Remove tongue and discard heavily salted water.

Set aside the tongue to cool.

When it is cool enough to easily handle, remove the skin with a very sharp knife.

With the same sharp knife, make a number of deep slits in the tongue and stuff them with slices of garlic.

Bring another pot of water to boil and add the tongue and 1 tablespoon of salt, 1 chopped onion, two bay leaves, twelve peppercorns, and several dashes of Tabasco.

Cover and let the tongue simmer over a very low flame for another 2 to 3 hours, or until it is meltingly tender.

Serves 4

The statue of General Mouton in Lafayette

Peter Patout's Red Beans and Rice

2011-03-05T03:40:00.000-08:00

All Patouts seem to have been born with a cooking gene. Peter, the New Orleans antique dealer is no exception. He is famous for lavish dinner parties cooked up in his miniscule kitchen on Bourbon Street where he has held forth, with one significant interruption, for many years.

The interruption occurred in the late 1990s when Peter, together with more than twenty other New Orleans antique dealers and collectors, unwisely bought from a skilful con man and his associates some objects that had been stolen from several New Orleans cemeteries: benches, urns, and statuary of the kind that are found, not only in southern cemeteries, but also in southern gardens.

When the thieves, who were stealing for drug money, were apprehended they faced life sentences because of previous convictions. Then the head of the gang had a stroke of genius. It occurred to him that if he could implicate the people who had bought from him in the crime, he and his accomplices might be able to get off with lighter sentences. So he persuaded the investigating police that the collectors and dealers to whom they had sold the stolen goods had actually commissioned them to steal and had told them what they wanted and where to steal it. It was a preposterous lie, but it made a much better news story than a gang of drug addicts being caught and sent to jail. The thieves’ allegations soon caught fire in the local press and spread quickly to the national and international news as well. Many citizens of New Orleans, where cemeteries loom large as the sacred resting places of their ancestors, were horrified and incensed.

Peter, who recently had been featured in a number of upscale lifestyle magazines, suddenly found himself the subject of a growing scandal in the media where every lurid rumor about the case was reported as fact. To protest his innocence, he gave a press conference in front of the New Orleans tomb where several of his ancestors are buried. Among other things, he pointed out that a statue the police had confiscated from his house was made of plaster of Paris, and thus could never have come from a cemetery where it would have soon melted away. Perhaps because he made the police look dumb, they soon made him the principal focus of their investigation. The NOPD, who themselves had a long history of being portrayed in the press as corrupt, relished the chance to be seen as “good guys” getting to the bottom of a heinous crime.

Of the many dealers and collectors who had bought from the gang, only three were indicted, and of the three, only Peter was convicted. That the scion of a prominent plantation family was involved in a shocking crime was too juicy a story for the press to ignore, and the press convicted Peter long before the jury did. In the end, he was the sacrificial lamb demanded by public outrage and spent 18 months in the Dixon Correctional Facility in Jackson, Louisiana, before, on appeal, his sentence was vacated and he was released, having spent much more time in prison for the crime than any of the actual thieves.

Peter has said that one thing that helped him get through the difficulties of prison life was the thought of the hardships his ancestors must have faced when, in the 19th century, they left a comfortable bourgeois life in France to carve their sugar plantations out of the fertile but harsh bayou land of southern Louisiana. “I have the same blood as they had,” he told himself, “and if they could survive that, I can survive this.”

Peter has the gift of always being able to find the silver lining of any grim situation. When, immediately after sentencing, he was thrown into the brutal New Orleans City Jail, he was comforted to learn that the sheriff in charge of the jail took pride in his recipe for cheese grits that prisoners were served. It was a small thing for Peter to look forward to at breakfast each day. And his first cell mate, a Cuban named Adonis, shared Peter’s love for good food, and with imagination and culinary know-how, they were able to transform leftovers and condiments smuggled from the dining hall back to their cell into quasi-gourmet treats.

Peter was eventually transferred to the prison farm at Jackson, Louisiana, where he was assigned to the gardening detail. He enjoyed the work outside in the orchard and in the flower gardens of a nearby historic home. Now, when he refers to his time in prison, he often begins by saying, “When I was away at horticultural school…..”

Shortly after his release from prison, Peter was visiting with one of his customers from a wealthy and prominent family in northern Louisiana. “Now, tell me, Peter.” she enquired, “which Louisiana prison were you in?” “I was at Jackson,” he told her. “What a pity!” she replied, “…if you had been in Angola, you could have met my cousin.”

His many friends are happy that Peter, his joie-de-vivre unquenched and himself not much the worse for wear, is once again inviting them to memorable dinner parties in the French Quarter where the food is prepared with innate skill and verve, and served on his elegant white-and-gold Vieux Paris china.

Each Mardi Gras day, Peter holds an open house for all his friends (and their friends) in the courtyard of his Bourbon Street home. It is always a crowded, but relaxed and festive occasion, providing some respite from the madness of the Quarter streets on the most frenzied day of the carnival season.

Recently, Peter invited to his Mardi Gras party two elderly retired nuns who had taught him in the Catholic elementary school in Jeanerette on the Bayou Teche, where Peter grew up. Not wanting to crimp anyone’s style and put a damper on the party, they requested that Peter not tell anyone that they were retired nuns,. “We’ve seen it all, anyway,” one of them told Peter. “Nothing can shock us anymore.” Peter respected their wishes, but, not surprisingly, several other of their former pupils were there and blew their cover. “So much for Sister Incognito,” Peter told them.

Here is Peter’s recipe:

1 lb of dried red beans (Goya small red beans are a good choice)

1 medium onion, peeled and chopped

½ bell pepper, roughly chopped

1 bunch of green onions, roughly chopped

3 cloves of garlic, peeled and roughly chopped

3 stalks of celery, roughly chopped

1 stick of butter

2 bay leaves

1 teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon Cayenne pepper

2 dashes of Tabasco

1 lb good quality smoked sausage, preferably andouille, chopped into bite-sized pieces

10 ounces sliced country ham

2 quarts of chicken or beef stock

1 teaspoon red wine vinegar

Soak beans overnight in cold water.

Rinse and drain, picking through the beans for any dirt or stones

In a deep pot, place beans and the other ingredients. Bring to a boil, then simmer over a low flame for 1½ hours. Check after 1 hour to make sure there is enough liquid. Add more stock or water, if needed.

For the rice:

2 cups of long grain rice

4 cups of water

2 teaspoons salt

2 bay leaves

When the red beans and rice are almost done, boil rice in a covered pot of water with salt and bay leaves for twenty minutes or until tender.

Serve the red beans and saysage over the rice.

Serves 8 to 10

Peter Patout pre-prison at the Croissant d'Or

How I Cook Long Grain Rice

2011-02-26T05:16:00.000-08:00

Long grain rice was a principal staple of the south Louisiana diet when I was growing up, and was an accompaniment to almost every meal, much as potatoes are elsewhere in the United States. Mahatma Rice was the brand we always used at home, and until I was grown, I was not aware that there was any other kind of rice. At that time, Mahatma, which today offers a wide variety of rices, sold only the long grain variety that grew in the flat, moist farmland of Louisiana and east Texas. I still buy it occasionally, but the long grain rice that we have come to love is the Aromatic Carolina Plantation Rice that we stock up on each time we go to Charleston. It was first introduced to South Carolina in 1685 from Madagascar and was grown there until the Civil War. It was re-introduced in 1996 and a small quantity is produced every year. We buy ours from the shop of the Historic Charleston Foundation which sponsors the Charleston International Antiques Show we exhibit in each March, but it is also available from other sources.

Whatever long grain rice I have on hand, this is how I prepare it: (The bay leaves, a tip from Peter Patout, add a lovely touch of flavor.)

1 cup rice

2 cups water

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon of olive oil or butter

2 bay leaves

Put salt, bay leaves, olive oil or butter into two cups of water. Bring to a boil. Add rice.

Stir once, then cover and turn down the heat and let simmer for about twenty minutes.

When all the water has been absorbed, fluff the rice with a fork, then serve.

Serves 3 or 4

Fanny's Gin Soup

2011-02-19T14:27:00.000-08:00

My mother was educated at the now defunct Mississippi Synodical College for Young Ladies in Holly Springs, Mississippi, where she learned to be a lady, but not to be a cook. Indeed, she was quietly proud of being helpless in the kitchen. It showed that she had never had to do that sort of thing. As a college president’s wife, she did a great deal of entertaining, but rarely found herself behind the stove. That was not her place.

When she did find herself behind a stove, she usually burned whatever was in or on it, and had developed a somewhat fatalistic attitude. When I returned to live near her in the 1970s, she found peculiar an effective remedy I had for an upset stomach, one that was common in Europe, but almost unknown in Lafayette, Louisiana: charcoal tablets that calmed intestinal turbulence and absorbed the poisons. Once when she saw me popping them, she told me: “I don’t know why you’re wasting all that money buying charcoal when all you have to do is ask me to fix lunch.”

In the course of a long, gracious, and, on the whole, very happy life, she did master a few, very few recipes for those occasions when a cook was not available.

Late in life she devised this recipe for Gin Soup as a first course. The amount of gin she used depended on her estimate of how palatable she thought the second course was likely to be. If it appeared that it was turning into an unavoidable fiasco, she poured with a heavy hand.

Ingredients:

1 can of Campbell’s consommé, diluted with one can of water

1 pint of half-and-half

A pinch of dried tarragon

A dash of Tabasco

As much gin as deemed necessary

Mix ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Serve

Fanny McLees Fletcher, circa 1918, shortly after her graduation from the Mississippi Synodical College for Young Ladies, Holly Springs, Mississippi

My Favorite Quick Soup

2011-02-12T04:20:00.000-08:00

This soup is one of my preferred comfort foods.

Ingredients:

4 cups organic (if possible) chicken broth

4 tablespoons of de Cecco “Riso” or “Acini di pepe” pasta*

1 clove of garlic, thinly sliced

1 thin slice of lemon

1 handful of arugula

Dash of Tabasco

Pinch of salt (optional)

Put chicken broth in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Add the pasta,* sliced garlic and lemon slice. Bring back to a boil and let simmer vigorously for the amount of time recommended on the package of pasta (about 12 minutes). One minute before pasta is done, stir in the handful of arugula. Taste and add salt if needed. When the arugula is completely wilted, pour into bowls and serve.

* “Riso” pasta is so named because it is made to resemble grains of rice. The brand of dry pasta I prefer is de Cecco. De Cecco’s riso is found in many supermarkets, and also can be ordered online.

Jane Bonin’s Dark Chocolate Pots de Crème

2011-02-05T01:39:00.000-08:00

We call our friend Jane Bonin La Veuve, even though, as of this writing, her ex-husband is still very much alive. We gave her the nickname because of her habit of always arriving with a bottle of champagne made by that most famous of French widows: La Veuve Cliquot. (Though once, when she showed up with a different brand, she told us “I’m so sorry. My wine shop was out of Veuve Cliquot, so I had to settle for something better.”)

Jane has a great sense of style and is always never less than chic. Sometimes when she comes for dinner, she stays the night and the next morning takes the commuter train back to Washington, where she lives. She always stands out from the throng of government employees and business people boarding the train as the only one among them who looks as if she might be going to Monte Carlo.

Jane is a wonderful cook and has prepared for us many memorable meals. Here is her favorite dessert. It is easy to make and goes very well, of course, with a glass or two of good champagne.

1 cup dark chocolate chips (Jane prefers Ghirardelli Bittersweet Chocolate)

1 ½ cups of light cream, scalded

2 egg yolks

3 tablespoons brandy or Grand Marnier

Blend all the ingredients in a food processor until the mixture is very smooth. Strain through a fine sieve and pour into 6 small cups or one medium serving dish. Cover and

chill for at least 3 hours.

Serve with vanilla flavored cream or whipped heavy cream with very little sugar.

Serves 6

Mrs. Selph's Cream Cheese Pound Cake

2011-01-29T07:06:00.000-08:00

It is a curious fact that the first year I lived in Italy, my three closest American friends in Florence, none of whom knew each other well, were all from Arkansas. Why, I wondered, was everyone fleeing Arkansas? Never having been there, I could only speculate. One of the displaced Arkansans was the previously mentioned John Pozza, the second was a budding art historian named Arthur Laurence, and the third was Carl Selph, a poet, teacher and, now, somewhat late in life and rather unexpectedly, a building tycoon in Mexico.

In the 1960s, Carl and I were business partners in a quixotic venture called “The American School of Languages,” which we bought for a modest sum from an American couple who were fleeing Florence. I have described it elsewhere as consisting of “about fifty prospective students, a stack of used textbooks, several rooms of used furniture, and a short lease on a rented apartment.” In spite of these unpromising beginnings, the school survived and even thrived under our direction for a number of years during which we learned a great deal about Florence and the Florentines, many of whom were eager to learn English.

Our students came from a broad spectrum of Florentine society, from the president of Olivetti in Florence (a smart man who nevertheless was never able to grasp the difference between “Hello” and “Goodbye.”) to the woman who gave out towels at the steam bath beneath the railway station. We also expanded the school with contracts to teach English to the Italians working for NATO in La Spezia, the policemen in Viareggio (who were earnest and kind, but hopeless…I always thought that if someone wanted to follow a career of crime, Viareggio would be an excellent place to begin), and the employees of the Eli Lilly Company in nearby Sesto Fiorentino.

Once a week, I rode my motorbike up a hill to the venerable Arcetri Observatory for an hour of delightful conversation with a group of astronomers who wanted to polish their already excellent English. When I entered the large circular room that housed the observatory library, I could see all the books, in identical bindings, that had been published by the astronomers of Arcetri. The names on the spines began with Galileo and ended with the names of my students.

There is much left to write about our experiences at La Scuola Americana di Lingue, and someday I hope to get it all down, but for now I will simply mention Carl Selph’s Collected Poems, which can be ordered from Amazon.com. They are intelligent, beautiful, lyrical works, many of which deal with his years in Italy. A critic has written of them: “Selph writes both formal and free verse, always ably crafted and carefully expressed through vivid imagery and apt word-choice.” I highly recommend them.

I also recommend his late mother’s recipe for cream cheese pound cake, one of the best I have ever eaten and very easy to make.

Pre-heat oven to 275 degrees

Ingredients:

3 sticks unsalted butter
8 ounce package of Philadelphia Cream Cheese
3 cups and 3 teaspoons of sugar
½ teaspoon of salt
1 ½ teaspoons of lemon extract
6 eggs
3 cups of sifted cake flour

Cream butter, cream cheese and sugar until fluffy.

Combine salt and flour and slowly add with eggs to the cream cheese mixture, beating well after each addition.

Blend in lemon extract.

Fold the mixture into a greased pan and bake for 1 ½ hours in the 275 degree oven.

Remove to rack and let cool before slicing and serving.

Carl Selph on the yacht of one of his rich friends in the 1960s. When he was in Florence and not traveling with rich friends, his usual mode of transportation was a much less glamorous grey Fiat sedan, which was at least one step above my Velo-Solex motorbike.

Denis Murphy's Whiskey Ginger Syllabub

2011-01-22T05:51:00.000-08:00

In 1963, Denis Murphy, a recent graduate of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and his wife Joan, an American, were a highly ornamental couple living in Florence. Denis’s part Portuguese ancestry gave him dark good looks unusual for an Englishman. Joan, thin and blonde, from Boston, looked as if she had just stepped out of a Botticelli painting. When I met them, Denis was teaching English at the Istituto Britannico, then located in the Palazzo Antinori on via Tornabuoni. The Istituto was where most well-born Florentines went to learn the language, and Denis and Joan had many friends among the fashionable and wealthy younger set in Florence who welcomed such beauty into their circle. A number of their chic friends could not understand why Denis worked so hard for a living; for them it was an alien concept. The correct way to live in Italy, they told him, was with a job that provided lots of money and made few demands on one’s time and energy. Some of them hinted that with their connections, Denis could easily find such a position. To Denis, it sounded like a plan. So he resigned from the Istituto, rented a charming casa colonica in the hills above Fiesole, bought a third-hand Alfa Romeo, and waited for his friends to find him a lucrative sinecure. When he told them what he had done, they seemed astonished, and suddenly began to be difficult to be in touch with. There followed a hard winter. Denis was forced to earn a living by driving all over Tuscany giving private English lessons, spending much of what he earned on gas for the thirsty Alfa Romeo. However, he survived and learned a lesson. In spring, he and Joan and their young daughter, Francesca, returned to Cambridge where he found a sensible job in the administration of his former college and went on to have a long and distinguished career, ending up as Senior Bursar of Magdalene, and as such winning much renown for his fund-raising skills. When he recently retired, after greatly increasing his college’s endowment, he returned to Italy and bought an impressive house on the shores of Lake Como where he was still the handsomest man in the neighborhood until George Clooney bought the house across the street.

When John and I visited Denis in Cambridge a few years ago, he invited us to have dinner with the Dons in the Magdalene College Dining Hall. We sat under a Wyndham Lewis portrait of T. S. Eliot and had a very civilized meal in mostly delightful company. I was seated between Denis and the Keeper of the Pepys Library, Dr. Richard Luckett, who made amusing conversation in spite of being insouciantly inebriated. John had less luck. The sullen man on his right was borderline rude and only wanted to talk condescendingly about his own achievement which had to do with an obscure but shatteringly important invention in a chemistry laboratory. After dinner, when we moved to another room for port, I sat next to the man and wormed out of him the startling information that, in spite of his Masterpiece Theatre accent, he was actually from Port Arthur, Texas.

Denis Murphy and I striking a pose, San Gimignano, 1963

Some time ago, Denis sent us a copy of the Magdalene College Magazine which contained a brief article he had written on a favorite Magdalene College treat. Whisky Ginger Syllabub, wrote Denis, was served on feast days in Magdalene College “when Fellows’ wives were admitted by the College Butler into the Gallery to enjoy the sight of their husbands’ “bald heads forgetful of their sins” eating pudding in the Hall below.”

Here is an adaptation of that recipe:

Whisky, 4 tablespoons

Ginger marmalade, 4 tablespoons

Rind of two lemons, finely grated

Caster sugar, 4 tablespoons

Double cream (chilled) 1 pint

Put whisky, marmalade, lemon rind, sugar into a bowl, stir well, leave mixture to stand 15 minutes.

Stir the cream slowly into this mixture until blended evenly then beat with an electric mixer until thick. Whisk egg whites until stiff, then fold them into the creamy mixture.

Spoon the syllabub into 8 large wine glasses, then chill for 30 minutes in a refrigerator. When well chilled, serve with langue de chat biscuits.

Serves 8

Eggs Florentine for Miss Bonney

2011-01-15T05:10:00.000-08:00

I first started making Eggs Florentine in the early 1960s in Florence, where no one had ever heard of them. I was still serving them at brunches when I moved to Paris a few years later, and this is probably the dish I prepared for a small gathering in my apartment on rue de Sevigné in the Marais one February day in 1970. (I write “probably” because I remember the guests and their conversation more clearly than what I served.) I gave the party as a favor for a friend, George Wickes, the American scholar, writer, and great authority on American expatriates who lived in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. George was in Paris doing research for his next book and had not been able to get an interview with one of the last Americans still living in Paris who had been very much part of the Paris art scene in the years between the two world wars: Thérèse Bonney. I had become acquainted with Miss Bonney, then in her mid-seventies, through our mutual friend Mary Guggenheim, and when George told me she had refused to see him, I thought that if I could get them together, George’s not inconsiderable charm might persuade her to grant him an interview.

Miss Bonney was then living in a large apartment on the Boulevard de la Tour Maubourg, not far from Les Invalides, and was fearing eviction because the apartment was coveted by a Gaullist minister who was pulling strings to get it. (And eventually did.)

The apartment housed a large collection of paintings, tapestries, and furniture that she had acquired over her many years as a resident of Paris and a friend and champion of many of the most important artists and designers of the early 20th century in France. She worked at a desk designed for her by Pierre Chareau. On a wall hung what she told me was the first tapestry made by Lurçat. There were paintings of her by Georges Rouault and Robert Delaunay; there were about twenty Raoul Dufy watercolors in her spacious bathroom, and over the dining room table was a larger-than-life-sized portrait of her by Dufy. The portrait had three chins. When he had finished it, she said, it had only two. She told him: “Duffy’ (she pronounced his name as if he were an Irishman), “I don’t have a double chin! So he reached up and added a third!” According to Mary Guggenheim, Thérèse and Dufy were lovers for many years, and perhaps they were. When she went off to photograph the Second World War, she carried a small Dufy painting in her knapsack.

Miss Bonney first came to Paris right after the Armistice which ended the First World War, and was to spend much of the rest of her life there. She was born in Syracuse, New York, and grew up in Oakland, California, studied languages at the University of California at Berkeley, where Mabel Teresa became Thérèse. After graduation, she went on for a master’s degree at Radcliffe. She considered a career in teaching, but decided she would prefer a more adventurous option. While she was pursuing doctoral studies at Columbia University, she found a job as private secretary to Jacques Copeau, director of the Théâtre du Vieux Colombier, then touring in the United States. About the same time, she and her older sister, Louise, opened the first bookshop devoted to French theater in New York City. But, early on, her sights were set on Paris.

Several reference works give the date of her arrival in France as 1919, but she once told me that she first arrived in Paris, where she was to spend most of the rest of her life, on the day after the signing of the Armistice. That would have been November 12th, 1918. By 1919 she was the representative in Paris of the American Association of Colleges, helping to choose the French students who would be part of an exchange program to encourage good relations between the United States and its Allies. Soon she was also working for the National Catholic War Council, an organization recognized by the U. S. War department to do welfare work overseas. And by April of 1919, Thérèse was finishing up her doctoral studies at the Sorbonne. She received her Doctorate in 1921, and by so doing, became the youngest person, the fourth woman, and the tenth American to receive this distinction. The event was trumpeted in the French press, and Thérèse became an overnight celebrity in Paris. “I was like Pocahontas to them,” she told me.

In the 1920s, Miss Bonney established the first American illustrated press service in Paris. It was called The Bonney Express and supplied photographs to newspapers and magazines in more than twenty countries. She and her staff of photographers documented what was happening in art, architecture, and design in Paris during that very fertile period between the two world wars when Art Deco was born. Her invaluable archive is now part of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

Miss Bonney was also active in introducing French art and design to the United States and helped to organize a number of exhibitions in New York City. A photograph in the Bonney collection of the University of California shows an elegantly attired Thérèse on the ocean liner Ile-de-France accompanying legendary art dealer Ambrose Vollard on his first trip to the United States in 1934. Her friends in the Parisian art world, in addition to Dufy, included Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Fernand Léger, Jean Lurçat, Georges Rouault, architect Robert Mallet-Stevens, designer Pierre Chareau, and many other of the most important names of the day. She was particularly close to fashion designer Madeleine Vionnet. Long after the Second World War, Coco Chanel, who Thérèse considered a collaborator with the Nazis, was given a medal by the City of Paris. It so infuriated her that she did not rest until she had successfully lobbied for Vionnet to be given an even more important honor.

Thérèse’s career as an unofficial ambassador for French culture to the world came to an end with the outbreak of World War II. This cataclysmic event transformed her into an intrepid war photographer and agent for the Office of Strategic Services. Her first experience as a war photographer came about accidentally when she happened to be in Finland in 1939 and produced an amazing photographic record of the Russian invasion of that country. She then returned to France and covered the Nazi invasion and the Battle of France, and, working with the Red Cross, also helped, under fire, to care for refugees at the Belgian border. In 1940 she was back in the United States where the Library of Congress mounted an exhibition of her photographs of the victims of war, entitled To Whom Wars Are Done. In 1943 she turned her photographs of displaced children into a book, Europe’s Children, which was the inspiration in 1948 for The Search, the first movie starring Montgomery Clift.

Thérèse was always a little vague about what she had done while in the service of the O.S.S. (the forerunner of today’s C.I.A.), but once did mention to me that she had been involved in a plot, that came to nothing, to smuggle DeGaulle back into France during the German Occupation.

After the war, Miss Bonney did not resume her work in documenting art and design. “After what I had seen, it just seemed too trivial, too unimportant,” she told me. Instead, she became involved in various humanitarian projects. She adopted a village in the Alsace region of France that had been almost completely destroyed during the war, raising money to feed and clothe its inhabitants and to re-build their ruined homes. She lectured and wrote a number of books, including an official guide to Paris illustrated by Dufy. When I got to know her she was still actively involved in what she considered worthy causes. At that time she was lobbying Washington to extend Medicare benefits to U.S. citizens living abroad.

Although Miss Bonney spoke French fluently, she never attempted to perfect her accent. In spite of her great love for France, she never considered herself anything but 100 percent American, and her flat Midwestern accent confirmed that she was exactly that. One sensed that it was a marker of her integrity. Why should she try to sound like someone she was not?

One evening I took her to the vernissage of an exhibition of paintings by Mary Guggenheim and Miss Bonney was shocked by the attire of some of those attending. A number of the women were even wearing blue jeans. The next morning my telephone rang early and I picked it up to hear Miss Bonney sternly say: “Mr. Fletcher, darling, the goo is gone!” It took me a moment to realize that she meant goût, the French word for “taste.”

When she came to the party in my apartment on that February day, she looked sensational. I described her in a letter to my parents as “wearing a black ski suit with a silver South American chastity belt worn as a necklace, and an Isadora-Duncan-length scarf of bright scarlet silk.” She was also wearing heavy combat boots that did not really go with the rest of her outfit, but the combination did perfectly express the two aspects of her life in France. George managed to sit next to her on the sofa and soon they were having an animated conversation. As I had hoped, he got his interview with her a few days later.

This is the dish we more than likely ate that day:

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees

4 large eggs
16 ounces of washed baby spinach leaves
2 cloves of garlic, sliced
2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
¼ cup of chicken broth
Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon freshly grated black pepper

For sauce:

4 tablespoons of all purpose flour
4 tablespoons of butter
½ cup of grated Swiss or other soft, mild cheese
1 cup of milk, or more as necessary

Put the olive oil into a saucepan large enough to accommodate the uncooked spinach.

Over medium heat sauté garlic until it softens.

Put in spinach and chicken broth, salt and pepper, and cook down over a low heat.

While spinach is cooking, make sauce:

Melt butter in another saucepan

Stir in flour and heat, while continuing to stir until the mixture bubbles and starts to lightly color.

Add milk while stirring and sauce begins to thicken

Slowly stir in grated cheese and continue to stir until mixture is thick but still pour-able.

Remove from heat and set aside.

Drain cooked spinach, reserving the liquid.

Put cooked and drained spinach into individual baking dishes (7.5 inch non-stick dishes are ideal). Reduce leftover liquid until it browns and thickens and pour over the spinach.

Grate nutmeg over spinach mixture.

Make two indentations in the spinach in each dish and break eggs into them.

Pour cheese sauce over the eggs and spinach. They should be almost completely covered.

Bake in oven for 15 to 20 minutes or until eggs are set but still liquid. Let cool for a few minutes before serving.

Serves 2

Miss Bonney with her Rolliflex during the Second World War

Antje's Red Pepper and Parsnip Soup

2011-01-07T19:19:00.000-08:00

Antje’s Red Pepper and Parsnip Soup with Pesto

Our German friend Antje Kompa works in the magazine publishing business in London, but in her spare time she is a much-in-demand caterer and an extraordinary vegetarian cook. This is an excellent soup she served the last time we were fortunate enough to be her guests for dinner:

For Soup:

1 tablespoon of unsalted butter

1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped

2 tablespoons dry sherry

2 large red peppers, de-seeded and chopped

About 1 pound of parsnips, peeled and grated

1 quart + 1 pint of vegetable stock

Salt and pepper to taste

For Pesto

2 cups of fresh basil leaves, tamped down

3 cloves of garlic

½ cup of grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese

1/3 cup of pine nuts (or walnuts)

½ cup of Extra Virgin olive oil

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.

Melt butter in a heavy saucepan, then stir in the onions and the sherry. Cook over medium-low heat for ten minutes or until the onions are softened.

Stir in the red peppers and parsnips and cook for a further ten minutes.

Add the stock and simmer, covered, for twenty minutes or until the vegetables are tender.

Let the soup cool slightly, then puree in a blender until smooth. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

In a mortar and pestle, or in a food processor, grind basil, garlic, pine nuts, and cheese. Slowly add olive oil while grinding until a thick paste has formed. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Serve the soup hot with a couple of teaspoons of the presto swirled into each serving.

Serves 4

Samia's Medallions of Pork with Prunes and Choux en Purée

2011-01-01T04:16:00.000-08:00

The Emira Samia al Jazairi, a descendant of Abd al-Qadir, the great 19th century national hero of Algeria, was like the girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead: when she was good, she was very, very good; when she was not she could be terrifying. The Arab blood of her paternal line made for a very volatile mix with the Irish blood of her maternal line: her mother was related to the Jameson’s of Irish Whiskey fame. Whenever I was invited to her Victorian row house on Baalbeck Road in Islington, I never knew which Samia would open the door. What both Samias, the charming and the terrifying, shared was great intensity. When she was charming, her charm was intense; when she was in a state, so was her fury.

Fortunately, the charming Samia was more often in evidence than the terrifying one, and she gave memorable dinner parties for which she cooked her heart out. The food was always rich, delicious, and plentiful. At the end of the meal she would put on the table a box of after-dinner mints in which the mints had been replaced with anti-acid tablets. At that point, most of her guests needed them. Instead of after dinner drinks, she thoughtfully offered her guests Alka-Seltzer. Samia had many friends who were devoted to her in spite of her volatile temperament. Her company could be either exhilarating or exhausting. But for some, she was just too much. My mother was one of those who did not care for her even in small doses. After Samia made a brief visit to us in Louisiana, I heard my mother telling one of her friends: “Joel’s friend Samia spent a month with us last weekend.”

Samia burned her candle on both ends and “did not last the night.” She was a relentless over-achiever, consumed with a huge, restless energy, always going to bed long after midnight and rising before dawn. She was barely fifty-years old when her lifestyle did her in and a stroke took her away. However, given that she slept only a few hours each night, her conscious hours on this earth were probably the equivalent of a much older person’s.

Here are two of her most memorable recipes. Consumed in moderation they probably will not require an Alka-Seltzer chaser:

Samia’s Medallions of Pork with Prunes

Four thick boneless pork chops

Cup of dried prunes

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

Seasoning flour (flour, salt, pepper and ground thyme)

½ bottle of dry white wine

For marinade:

1 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

¼ teaspoon ground thyme or sage

1/8 teaspoon ground bay leaf

½ clove of mashed garlic

1 cup of chopped onions

Rub dry marinade into pork and leave in the refrigerator overnight.

Soak prunes overnight in wine

Next day:

Cut chops in two inch pieces and trim fat

Twirl in seasoning flour

Melt butter with olive oil in a pan and add medallions over low flame

Let meat stiffen, but not brown – 3 or 4 minutes

Transfer meat to a casserole and cook chopped onions in butter and oil until transparent.

Add onions to casserole with the pork and pour in the wine from the prunes, setting the prunes aside for the moment.

Cover casserole and put in 350 degree oven for 1 ½ hours.

For last half hour, place prunes in a separate pot and place in oven.

When the meat is done, put it in a serving dish.

Reduce liquid in pot over high heat. Slowly stir in one pint of heavy cream. Add prunes to meat, pour sauce over it and serve.

Serves four

Samia’s Choux en Purée

Samia always served the preceding dish with the following cabbage dish. They make “a very happy marriage” on the table.

1 large cabbage

2 medium yellow onions, chopped

A bouquet garni (dried parsley, thyme, bay leaf, and rosemary in a little sack of cheesecloth)

1 stick of unsalted butter

2 tablespoons of flour

1 cup of heavy cream

Salt, pepper, and nutmeg to taste.

Take off and discard tough leaves of cabbage. Cut cabbage into four sections.

Cut away and discard hard core.

Put sections into a large pot of boiling salted water.

Return to boil and let boil for five minutes.

Drain and separate the leaves and place them in saucepan with chopped onions and bouquet garni.

Cover with water and boil until tender.

Put cabbage in food blender and blend until fine.

Place in sieve and allow to drip through into a bowl. Make pale roux with butter and flour. When it thickens, add cream.

Simmer and keep stirring until the mush becomes very thick.

Add pureed cabbage and mix thoroughly.

Add salt, pepper and nutmeg and let simmer for a few minutes over a low flame.

Keep warm until served. This goes perfectly with the pork and prune dish above and also with such fatty meats as goose, duck, pheasant and venison.

Samia in the garden at 9 Lower Mall, Hammersmith

Shrimp Salad for a Christmas Lunch

2010-12-25T04:10:00.000-08:00

When John and I entertain friends for lunch during the Christmas holidays, this is the dish I usually prepare:

The day before it is to be served:

2 lbs of frozen large farm-raised shrimp, shell on (easy peel shrimp)

Thaw shrimp overnight or under running water and boil 3 to 4 minutes in salted water with several tablespoons of Zatarain crab boil

Chill overnight.

3 mirlitons (chayote squash) Cut in quarters and boiled until tender.

Chill overnight

Next day, peel shrimp and put in a large bowl.

Peel mirlitons and cut in bite-sized pieces, and add to bowl.

Also add to bowl:

One can of hearts of palm, chilled, cut into bite-sized pieces.

Two stalks of celery, cut into small pieces

White part of one bunch of green onions, chopped

One bunch of chopped parsley

One can of water chestnuts, halved

Half a dozen Campari tomatoes, quartered, or a dozen grape tomatoes halved and pulp removed.

The tender part of a fennel bulb, cut into small slices

One teaspoon of red curry powder

Salt to taste (try one teaspoon, add more if necessary)

Two tablespoons of Hellmann’s mayonnaise

One tablespoon of balsamic vinegar

Combine with large spoon, cover and refrigerate until served in bowls over baby arugula

Serve with hot, crusty French bread and a dry white wine or Champagne or Prosecco.

Serves 6

Raymonde Duval's Gigot

2010-12-18T04:20:00.000-08:00

The fashionistas have taken over the Palais Royal in Paris and Raymonde Duval’s charming gallery which specialized in remarkable early 20th century French artists has been replaced by a shop selling chic and unbelievably expensive gloves. But we have many happy memories of beautiful works of art hanging on the walls of her small gallery, especially the brilliant canvases and works on paper by Augustin Hanicotte, a gifted artist who, celebrated in his lifetime, was almost forgotten after his death. Hanicotte was re-discovered and promoted by Raymonde in the 1990s. The artist, who worked both in Holland and in Collioure in the south of France, was a gifted colorist, very influenced by the Fauves, those early 20th century artists dubbed “wild beasts” because of their strong use of color and vivid imagery.

When Henri Matisse, one of the leading fauves, who early in the 20th century helped invent the movement in Collioure, left his studio there, Hanicotte moved into it and remained for the next thirty years. The culmination of Raymonde’s efforts to bring Hanicotte’s art back into the public eye was a large retrospective of his work held in 2000 in the Musée d’Art Moderne in Collioure and in the nearby Château Royal which is pictured in so many of his works.

We had the good fortune to spend a day in Collioure seeing the exhibition with Raymonde, and when the exhibition ended, we were able to purchase about sixty of the wonderful works that had been on display. We sold them very quickly, keeping only one extraordinary watercolor and gouache for ourselves.

Raymonde and her elegant and now vanished gallery in the Palais Royal

Raymonde not only has a good eye for discovering art, but also a good nose for finding restaurants, and she is a superb cook. We have had many wonderful meals with Raymonde, both in restaurants she has discovered and at her own table. Several times in Paris, and once when she visited us in Virginia, she made this succulent leg of lamb for us.

8 pound leg of lamb

10 cloves of garlic, peeled

½ cup of Extra Virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon of salt

½ teaspoon of pepper

Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees

Dry the leg of lamb, then rub in the salt and pepper, coat with the olive oil

With the sharp point of a knife, make ten holes in the lamb and stuff in the cloves of garlic.

Place lamb on a rack in a roasting pan in which you have put one cup of water and put in oven.

Every half hour put another cup of water in the roasting pan.

After 45 minutes, turn the lamb.

Turn it again after another 45 minutes.

Let cook for another ½ hour, then remove from the oven and set aside for ten minutes before serving. Serves 8

Augustin Hanicotte (1870-1957) The Goat-herd, watercolor and gouache, 1925

The Tapenade of Jean Nicolas

2010-12-11T03:51:00.000-08:00

Our friend Jean Nicolas, a retired Parisian banker, had for many years a very enviable job. As a loan officer of a major French bank, he would take potential clients to Maxim’s five days a week and over lunch decide whether or not the bank should lend them a great deal of money. Jean was then (and is still) very trim. I once asked him how he managed to keep his figure when he was obliged to eat so often in one of the great gastronomic temples of France. “Très simple,” he said. “I always order exactly the same thing: a chop, a green salad, and a bottle of Perrier.” Jean no doubt exercised the same self-discipline when handing out loans, and had more bankers followed his example, the world’s finances probably would be in less turmoil today.

Jean was born in Nyons in Provence. He makes a tasty and very healthful tapenade using this family recipe. He has pointed out that the caper is called “tapé” or “tapeno”in Provençal, thus: “ tapenado” or “tapenade” means a sauce made with capers, even though ripe olives are the principal ingredient.

2 ½ cups of ripe olives, pitted and rinsed

½ cup of capers

4 filets of anchovies

½ tablespoon of Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil (2 if you prefer a thinner consistency)

Mix the ingredients and pass through a food mill or grind in a food processor, being careful not to over-process them.

Serve on toast or crackers.

Jean Nicolas on a visit to London, 1971 circa,

Lower Mall, Hammersmith

Pasta alla Carbonara - A Last Minute Meal Chez Mary Guggenheim

2010-12-04T02:26:00.000-08:00

There are no recipes in this collection from my late friend Mary Guggenheim. Multi-talented Mary was a gifted writer, translator, playwright, painter, sculptor and ballerina, but in the kitchen she was a disaster, sometimes spectacularly so. In the 1960s, when we were both living in Paris, she often invited me to dinner and thus I was a witness to many of her culinary mishaps. Two I remember vividly. On one occasion, she tried to prepare salted cod from a recipe our mutual friend Edouard Roditi had given her. The recipe was for 12 persons, and Mary had altered it to serve four. She had reduced all amounts, including the time the cod was supposed to soak in milk to make it edible. The result was a salty white lump that only a cow would have enjoyed licking. And once for my birthday dinner, having cooked lentils without letting them soak first, she served me what appeared to be a plate of gravel.

Mary’s infamy as a cook is a footnote in the history of French literature. When she was a young woman living in New York, she was asked, because she was fluent in French, to show visiting writer Simone de Beauvoir around the city. At the time Mary was involved in an on-again, off-again affair with Nelson Algren in Chicago. As Mlle. de Beauvoir was preparing to leave New York to spend a few days in Chicago, Mary gave her Algren’s phone number, telling her: “He’s a writer, too. You’ll have lots to talk about.” Mary once showed me a letter she had received from Algren shortly afterwards in which he had written: “Who is this Simone de Boudoir you sent me?” It took Mary fifteen years to get around to reading The Mandarins, de Beauvoir’s 1954 novel which was inspired by her romance with Algren. Only then did Mary realize that her generous gesture had led to a famous love affair, and she was furious!

A few years ago, I came across a volume of de Beauvoir’s letters to her most celebrated lover, Jean-Paul Sartre, and turned to the index to see if any of them mentioned Mary. One did. In it de Beauvoir describes how this mad woman who had been her guide to New York City insisted that she come to her apartment for dinner. Miss Guggenheim, wrote de Beauvoir, spent an hour in the kitchen making a zabaglione that proved to be inedible.

On the evenings that I was invited to dine chez Mary, I became accustomed to dashing out just before the Paris food stores closed at 8 p.m. to buy something to replace whatever we were supposed to have been eating. Most often it was this Pasta alla Carbonara that I could assemble and cook in less than half an hour.

1 tablespoon of Extra Virgin Olive Oil

6 ounces of diced pancetta

3 cloves of garlic, minced

2 tablespoons of salt

1 pound of spaghetti or linguine

3 large eggs, well beaten

¾ cup of grated Parmigiano-Romano

¼ cup of grated pecorino

¾ cup of boiling pasta water

¼ cup chopped parsley for garnish

Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.

Add pancetta and garlic and stir until crisp, then remove from heat, and set aside.

Bring water to a boil. Add salt and the spaghetti or linguine, and cook until it is al dente.

Drain, reserving ¾ of a cup of the pasta water.

While the pasta is still very hot, dump it back into the pan over low heat.

Add the eggs, half the cheese and the pancetta and toss well. Add enough of the pasta water to make the mixture creamy. Let rest for a few minutes to allow the flavors to marry, then sprinkle with freshly ground pepper, garnish with parsley, and serve. Pass the remaining cheese at the table.

Serves 4

Mary Guggenheim in the Marais, Paris, circa 1969

Mary Guggenheim on Hammersmith Bridge, London, circa 1971

Mary Guggenheim and I, Anse La Butte, Louisiana, 1979

Mary Guggenheim and Vooddo Doll, Anse La Butte, 1979

Mushroom Risotto, Not For One Hundred

2010-11-27T05:33:00.000-08:00

In the early 1970s, I was on secondment from a federation of American universities to the British Ministry of Education, heading a program to set up educational exchanges between the United States and Great Britain. Through a friend, I was lucky to find an apartment in a house overlooking the Thames in Hammersmith. 9 Lower Mall, a much-bastardized 18th century dwelling, is said to have been built in 1714 to accommodate the German mistress of King George I. In the 19th century, for a time, the celebrated Victorian photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn lived there. In the middle of the 20th century, it became the home of George and Sophie Devine and their tenants, theater director Tony Richardson and American sociologist George Washington Goetschius. Devine was the artistic director of the Royal Court Theatre, Richardson was his assistant, and Goetschius, as Richardson’s lover, was an unpaid adviser. This trio discovered the playwright, John Osborne, who was living in a houseboat moored at nearby Chiswick Mall, and decided to stage his play Look Back in Anger, a landmark event that changed the course of British theatrical history.

By the time I came to live in the house on Lower Mall, George and Sophie Devine were both dead and Tony Richardson had run off with Vanessa Redgrave. George Goetschius, however, remained, and the house still had strong ties to the Royal Court Theatre. Playwright Nicholas Wright ( known as “the strawberry blond”) lived on the ground floor and Peter Gill, also a playwright, lived in the flat above mine. In spite of their being convinced that I was in the employ of the C.I.A. (or perhaps because of it, an illicit thrill), they accepted me into their lives and for a little over two years I greatly enjoyed living there. (Much later it occurred to me that I probably was working for the C. I. A., but no one had ever told me.)

There were always interesting people around to talk to, free theatre tickets, and lots of parties, which in good weather usually spilled out onto the sidewalk in front of the house next to the river where passers-by often wandered up and joined in the festivities.

In addition to the parties at the house, many of its inhabitants and their friends spent a great deal of time drinking in the nearby Blue Anchor Pub. At 9 Lower Mall there were probably more glasses from the Blue Anchor than there were in the pub itself, having been snitched and brought home by several generations of habitués.

George told many stories about what life had been like there when it was a home to the Devines, and he and Tony Richardson had been lodgers. Once when Tony had forgotten his key and was entering the house through a window very early one morning, he was intercepted by a policeman. Tony protested that he lived there and that George, who was sleeping upstairs, could identify him. They woke George who said, “No, officer, I’ve never seen this man before in my life.” Tony was hauled off to jail where George let him stay for what was left of the night.

The Devines circle of friends included many theatrical celebrities whom they sometimes entertained. When Laurence Olivier and Joan Plowright eloped, pursued by reporters and photographers, they sought refuge with the Devines until the press discovered them there, and then had to escape by climbing over the back garden wall.

Although the Royal Court was an important part of the London theatrical scene in the Fifties, and George and Sophie were themselves celebrities, money was often in short supply. One Sunday morning when George went out early to get the papers, he found Sophie fully dressed, properly made-up, wearing a hat and holding a pair of gloves, seated in the front hall. “What on earth are you doing sitting there dressed like that at this hour?” George asked. “The milkman is coming and I haven’t enough money to pay his bill,” Sophie replied. At that moment the milkman appeared at the door and Sophie sprang into action. In her best upper-class accent, she began to explain, while slowly putting on one glove, that she had not been able to get to the bank the day before. The milkman, totally intimidated by the accent and the aristocratic gesture with the glove, abjectly backed out: “Oh, Mrs. Devine, that is quite all right, quite all right!” As soon as he was gone, Sophie took off her finery, scrubbed her face, and went back to bed.

When I first moved to 9 Lower Mall, the second-floor flat was still occupied by a sitting tenant who had been there since the days of the Devines. Ralph was an aging transvestite who worked as a cutter at Sadler’s Wells Opera. Sometimes he wore costumes at home that he had filched from the theatre, the most memorable being an ensemble in purple silk complete with a towering powdered wig that had come from a production of The Queen of Spades. But he was always in one kind of drag or another. The butchest outfit I ever saw him in was a gaudily flowered muumuu.

Whenever the doorbell rang (there was only one for all four apartments), Ralph would rush down to open the door. I had learned to warn friends who were coming to visit me for the first time that they might be greeted by an outrageous apparition, and, more often than not, they were.

One day I received a letter from my mother telling me that Diette McKeithen, the mother of the then governor of Louisiana, John McKeithen, and an old friend and former classmate of hers at the Mississippi Synodical College for Young Ladies, was going to be spending some time in London. She would be traveling with a group of Methodist ladies who intended to visit every church in the British Isles where John Wesley had preached. “I gave Diette your address,” Mother wrote. “She said that when she got to London she would just hop in a taxi and hope to find you home.” I never heard from Mrs. McKeithen, and my mother never heard from her again. It was not hard to figure out why. The sight of Ralph at the door wearing god-knows-what must have been an extremely unnerving interruption of her tour of Methodist chapels.

Ralph provided an entertaining spectacle around the house, but, unfortunately, there was a darker side to his tenancy. He was often drunk and on several occasions, being careless with cigarettes, almost burned the place down. He also brought home unsavory characters who threatened the calm with rowdy and noisy behavior. George, our landlord, had been trying to get rid of him for years. When I arrived on the scene, George was able to persuade the local council, who had the final say on tenants’ rights, that I was his American cousin and, as a family member, took precedence over a sitting tenant. The ruse worked. Ralph and all his gowns went elsewhere and I moved upstairs into Ralph’s old flat. Life was perhaps a little duller after Ralph’s departure, but still festive.

On one occasion, after finishing work on a BBC series of dramatizations of Joyce’s Dubliners, Peter Gill had saved enough money out of his budget to give a party for all those involved in the production: roughly a hundred people. One of his actors, Colin Thatcher (no relation to Margaret), and I were asked to prepare the food. We went to Soho and bought fresh mushrooms and onions, an enormous hunk of Parmigiano cheese, and a huge bag of rice, enough to make risotto for the expected hundred guests.

Since no one had a pot large enough or a stove large enough to accommodate a risotto for 100, we had multiple pots cooking in three kitchens on three floors that evening, and rushed up and down the stairs, trying to keep the risotto from scorching.

The guests started arriving shortly after nine. Of the one hundred invited, only about forty came, and of those, most had already eaten. Among the few who graciously ate our dinner were the American actress Betsy Blair and her then husband, Czech movie director Karel Reisz. I gave them generous portions, but they scarcely made a dent in the heaps of food. When the party ended, there were large platters of cold risotto everywhere. The fish in the Thames outside our door were very well fed that night.

I later polished my risotto-making skills and the below recipe for six is the result:

4 cups chicken broth

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon truffle oil (frowned on by some)

1 ½ lbs of fresh Portobello and Crimini mushrooms, cleaned and thinly sliced

1 cup of dried mixed mushrooms, rinsed and re-hydrated in a cup of chicken broth

2 shallots, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, minced

3 tablespoons of Italian parsley, chopped

2 tablespoons of fresh thyme, chopped

2 cups of Arborio rice

½ cup of dry white wine

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon finely chopped chives

½ cup of freshly grated Reggiano Parmigiano cheese

Put the olive oil into a large skillet over medium heat and add shallots and garlic, stirring until they become translucent.

Coat a saucepan with the remaining tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat. Add the rice and stir until it is coated with the oil and becoming opaque, about a minute. Stir in the wine and continue cooking until it has mostly evaporated. Add the shallots and garlic to the rice, then the fresh and re-hydrated mushrooms.

Heat the broth in another saucepan and, just before it begins to simmer, ladle it one cup at a time into the rice mixture, while oh so gently stirring, (giving the rice more of a nudge than a stir).

When you have added the last cup of broth and allowed it to be absorbed, the rice should be al dente and creamy. This should take about twenty minutes. Stir in grated parmesan cheese and leave it over the heat only until the cheese has melted.

Drizzle the truffle oil over the risotto and add the chopped parsley and the chives and serve.

Serves six as a main course.

                                                      9 Lower Mall, Hammersmith
                                                              A recent photo

George Goetschius and Peter Gill in the downstairs
kitchen where most socializing took place

Playwright and actor Noel Greig, Peter Gill, and I in the garden,

circa 1971

Peter Gill and Nicholas Wright in the kitchen

George Goetschius exiting the kitchen,

Peter Gill listening to the radio in the kitchen.

Peter reading in my flat.

The garden at 9 Lower Mall.

Eloping Laurence Olivier and Joan Plowright

jumped over the wall to avoid photographers and journalists

who were waiting for them to emerge from the front door

.One of the many stories told by George and Peter.

Peter Gill, Nicky Wright, and Colin Thatcher sitting around the kithen
table where, according to George Goetschius, John Osborne
first read aloud to him, George Devine, and Tony Richardson, the
manuscript of Look Back in Anger, soon thereafter produced
at the Royal Court.

High tide on the Thames. The view from my window at 9 Lower Mall

Cranberry Conserve

2010-11-20T05:01:00.000-08:00

This is one of our Thanksgiving standbys, and beats by a mile the red cranberry stuff that comes out of a can.

1 cup cranberry juice

1 cup sugar

1 jigger of port

Zest of one orange, minced

1 package of fresh cranberries, rinsed and picked through

1 cup of dried cranberries

In a medium saucepan, combine the cranberry juice, sugar, orange zest, and port and bring to a boil.

Add the fresh and dried cranberries and cook over moderate heat for about ten minutes, using a wooden spoon to mash the fresh berries against the side of the pan.

When the conserve is thick and jam-like, transfer it to a bowl and chill. Can
be refrigerated for up to two weeks.

Almost John Pozza's Tuscan-Style Beans

2010-11-13T04:18:00.000-08:00

Life in Italy in the early 1960s was extremely inexpensive. At that time there were decent trattorie in Florence where one could get a good three-course meal for the equivalent of 50 cents. A bottle of the best Antinori Chianti Riserva cost 600 lire, just under a dollar. And shortly after I went to live there, for about eight dollars a month, I rented a room on the piano nobile of the 15th century Palazzo Rustici, behind the Palazzo Vecchio, where Leonardo da Vinci himself had spent some time in 1500 after he fled Milan because of the fall of his patrons, the Sforza family. The palazzo was then the home of one of his pupils, the sculptor Giovan Francesco dei Rustici, and it was with dei Rustici that Leonardo sought refuge.

My room in Palazzo Rustici boasted a graceful white marble fireplace topped by a fresco of Hercules, two arched alcoves that had windows facing the ochre façade of a Romanesque church, and a beautifully worn red brick floor that I kept swept and oiled. Such was the grandeur of my dwelling that I was usually able to ignore the reality that there was neither hot water nor any real source of heat. The fireplace was merely decorative and probably had been for centuries. That winter I bought a series of ornamental but useless stoves at the flea market and was probably lucky to have escaped asphyxiation. However, even when it was cold and damp, sunlight often streamed into the two windowed alcoves, giving the illusion of warmth. And I solved the hot water problem by joining the Canottieri, a rowing club on the Arno just a few blocks away, where I was able to take showers, shave, and maintain a reasonable level of personal hygiene.

The palazzo was a warren of rooms, large and small, rented out to foreigners: students, artists, and among them always a number of young Australians who were making their obligatory jaunt around the world before settling in down under. Next to my spacious room was a small one in which lived William, a pale, skinny, and reclusive young American scholar, who, by living very frugally, had made the funds of a one-year fellowship stretch out to five. A weepy Australian girl, inappropriately named Gay, who also lived somewhere in the palazzo, was obsessed with William and would leave gifts of food and flowers with notes at his door. When she became too intense in her pursuit, William would disappear for a few weeks, no one knew where.

The grand salone next to mine was the studio of a Fulbright artist from California, John Hunter, who was working on a series of huge paintings of Leda and the Swan. The working title he had given the series, which I believe he later wisely changed, was: “Take me to Your Leda.”

In the room above me was John Pozza, an Italian-American former Fulbright scholar from Arkansas who had decided to stay in Florence after his scholarship year was up, and had found a teaching job.An odd bird, but talented, his hobby was making life-sized Renaissance-style angels in papier-mâché, all of which had the face of his Italian lover, whom I often saw, coming and going, on the monumental stairway that went up to the piano nobile. John’s replicas were so authentic looking that once when he tried to ship one to Arkansas, the Belle Arti Commission intervened because they suspected that it was a national treasure. He received authorization for shipment when he scraped a bit off the bottom of the statue’s foot and showed the representative of the Belle Arti that it was actually made from recent copies of La Nazione, the Florentine daily newspaper.

A few years ago, John, living again in Arkansas, sent me his recipe for authentic Tuscan-Style Beans (Fagioli all’Uccelletto), which had been a favorite Florentine dish of ours, not only because it was usually one of the cheapest things on the menu. Here is my version:

1 pound dried navy beans

¾ cup of olive oil

6 cloves of garlic, finely minced or put through a garlic press

1 14 ½ ounce can of whole, peeled tomatoes and their juice

½ 14 ½ can of diced tomatoes and their juice

3 sprigs of fresh sage or ½ teaspoon of ground sage

1 teaspoon of sea salt

½ teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper

Soak beans for at least 8 hours in enough cold water to cover them.

Drain beans and rinse under cold water, then place them in a large saucepan. Cover them with unsalted cold water and simmer until tender but firm (about 45 minutes to an hour).

Heat the oil in a heavy skillet and lightly brown garlic, being careful not to burn it.

Drain beans and add them, the tomatoes and their liquid and the sage to the skillet and gently simmer until the sauce thickens, and the beans become tender, about an hour. Do not add salt and pepper until beans are done. The dish will be better if it is allowed to sit on the back of the stove for a few hours before it is served.

6 servings

\\\\\\\\\

A Consommé Devoutly to be Wished

2010-11-06T07:10:00.000-07:00

Jim S., from Omaha, lived in several sumptuous apartments in Florence for over twenty years and never learned to pronounce the names of any of the streets they were on. The last and grandest was on the ground floor of Palazzo Guicciardini where he, his partner, Roger, and his mother, whose wealth provided the wherewithal, lived in their idea of grand style.

The apartment was first rented out by the Guicciardini family during the difficult period just after the Second World War. Before that, the entire enormous palazzo, next to the Palazzo Pitti, was a one-family dwelling.

The first rental was handled discreetly by an agency. The agent assured the then head of the family, Count Paolo, that he had found an extremely suitable tenant: a titled Englishwoman. The Count and Countess Guicciardini were, therefore, somewhat startled when they saw the new tenant in the cortile: a very mannish woman wearing a man’s suit and sporting a monocle. They soon discovered that they their new renter was the surviving half of one of the most famous Lesbian couples in English literature: Lady Una Troubridge, companion of the writer Radclyffe Hall whose novel of Lesbian life, The Well of Loneliness, had shocked Edwardian England and much of the rest of the world.

After Hall’ s death during the war, Lady Una, previously the epitome of femininity, began to assume her dead lover’s masculine ways and took to wearing her Saville Row men’s suits. Count Paolo’s nephew, Francesco, told me, that at first his uncle and aunt were appalled and shocked to have such a person living under their august roof, but gradually they got to know Lady Una and they became fast friends, playing bridge together and attending together the opera at the Teatro Communale, to which Lady Una always wore her late partner’s elegant dinner jacket.

By the time the slightly strange ménage à trois from Omaha moved into the flat, Count Paolo and his wife were long dead and his heir, the bachelor Count Francesco, was the owner of the palace. He was not at all shocked by his new tenants. In fact, Francesco enjoyed entertaining a wide variety of types from all social classes, not a few of them slightly disreputable. Count Francesco was unconcerned by what anyone thought of the comings and goings. “I cannot live my life to please my concierge,” he once told me.

Jim S. filled the apartment with many costly things: original Majorelle furniture, Tiffany lamps, and the like, and he would gladly tell you just how much his furnishings were worth.

Once I was invited to dinner by Jim a few weeks before the annual Pitti fashion show. A disparate group of about eight gathered in one of the over-furnished salons for drinks before dinner. When we all had drinks in hand, Mrs. S. made her appearance, somewhat unsteadily. I suspect she had already had a drink or two. She was dressed in haute couture with many rings, bracelets, and chains and looked rather like a bulldog in elaborate drag. Roger handed her a drink, then another, and she drank them down without saying a word. Eventually, we moved to the dining room and took our places at a large rectangular table. I was directly opposite Mrs. S.. A lovely consommé was served and the conversation, which as I recall was about how high or low hems were going to be at the upcoming fashion shows, continued. Mrs. S. seemed to have no opinion on this topic and she sat silently as the various options were discussed. Then, suddenly, she snorted and fell face forward into her consommé. The conversation flowed on undisturbed while Mrs. S. gurgled softly in her soup. After a very long moment, Roger got up, lifted her out of the bowl, wiped her off with her napkin, and led her away. Surprised by the seeming nonchalance of the other dinner guests, I turned to my neighbor, a disagreeable German countess named Eva, and said. “Poor Mrs. S.! I hope she is going to be all right.” “Don’t worry about it,” Eva replied. “It happens every night.”

I never saw Mrs. S. again. A year or so after the dinner party, I heard that she had fallen and broken her arm but was mending nicely for an 80+ year-old. A few weeks later, one morning just before dawn, I had a vivid dream: there was a knock at the door of my apartment in Piazza Peruzzi. I opened it and there was the Angel of Death, wings and all. “I’ve come to tell you that Mrs. S. is dead,” the Angel said. “Thank you for letting me know,” I replied, and then woke up, and realized it was just a dream. It had seemed so real.

Later that morning friends came by for coffee. While I was telling them about the dream, the telephone rang. It was one of Jim’s friends. “Have you heard about Jim’s mother?” he asked. “I think so,” I said. Mrs. S. had died of natural causes a few hours before. Soup was not involved.

Here is a consommé, adapted from a recipe in my 1942 edition of The Original Picayune Creole Cook Book, into which Mrs. S. might have enjoyed a plunge. It is fairly simple to make, but does requires a lot of time.

Consommé Doré

1 gallon of water

1 chicken, cut up in pieces

1- ½ lbs beef marrow bones

1 lb of good boiled ham, cut in chunks

The whites and shells of two large eggs

2 large sprigs of parsley

1 small parsnip

1 carrot

2 stalks of celery

1 medium yellow onion

1 leek, washed

3 cloves

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon ground black pepper

3 dashes of Tabasco hot sauce

1 pat of butter

Put the chicken, ham and bones into a large pot of cold water, bring to a boil and let simmer for five hours, keeping the pot well covered.

Chop the vegetables and sauté them in a skillet with the pat of butter until tender . Add the vegetables, the salt, pepper, Tabasco, and cloves to the soup and let it simmer for another two hours.

Let the mixture cool and then chill in the refrigerator over night. Next day remove the congealed fat and scoop up the jelly, leaving the thickest part of the sediment (which, after the much-boiled bones are removed, can be added to another soup)

Put the egg whites and shells into the jelly and bring to a fast boil for about ten minutes, then let settle and cool.

Strain the mixture through a double layer of cheese cloth. According to the Picayure Creole Cook Book, it should be “ a beautiful golden-brown color.” May be served hot or chilled, garnished with a thin slice of lemon and a sprinkle of chopped parsely.

Serves six

Stufato di Vitello at Palazzo Guicciardini

2010-10-30T06:16:00.000-07:00

Count Francesco Guicciardini, whose ancestor of the same name in the 16th century wrote the first history of Florence and the first history of Italy, had a very good address:

Il Conte Francesco Guicciardini
Palazzo Guicciardini
Via Guicciardini
Firenze

Palazzo Guicciardini is really a series of palazzi extending from the Palazzo Pitti to the Ponte Vecchio on land that has belonged to the Guicciardini family since the 13th century.

Count Francesco was an unpretentious and sweetly charming man who wore his impressive heritage very lightly. The first time he showed me around the palazzo, he pointed out two paintings that hung in simple gold frames in the anteroom of the library and said: “These are our Caravaggios. They tell me they are very good ones.” He paused and considered them. “I don’t know…I like them.”

When I got to know Francesco in the early 1960s, he was in his mid-fifties and lived in a modernized and comfortable flat on the ground floor of the palazzo. His mother, who had been one of the great beauties of Florence, lived in grander quarters above on the piano nobile, the same floor that included a handsome library and a number of formal sitting rooms that must have been much used on official occasions when Francesco’s ancestors helped the Medici govern Florence. The impressive library had bookcases that ran from a polished red brick floor to the ceiling high above. The room was bisected by three arches and columns of pietra serena, the grey stone typical of Tuscany, and from the ceiling hung an enormous Flemish brass chandelier.

Oddly, the library housed the largest collection in Italy of books on Quakerism. One of Francesco’s ancestors in the 19th century had gone to England and become a Quaker. Lo zio quacquero, as he was known in the family, had brought back with him a huge number of volumes about his new religion.

At one time the library had held the priceless archive of the Guicciardini, family papers going back to the beginning of the Renaissance, but in the 1930s Francesco’s uncle, Count Paolo, got tired of scholars with dirty shoes tracking through the palazzo to study the archive and moved the collection to a ground floor suite of rooms with a separate entrance behind the palazzo. There rows of sturdy shelves are marked with labels that bear the names of all the great families of Florence: Medici, Strozzi, Machiavelli, Alberti, Antinori, Bardi, Ghiberti, Vespucci, to name but a few. What I best remember about my visit to the archive with Francesco was a shelf labeled: Vari Cardinali (Miscellaneous Cardinals) and a letter from that scourge of earthly pleasures, Savonarola, to the monks of the Convent of San Marco that began with a most un-Savonarola-like greeting: I miei carissimi, dolcissimi fratellini (My dearest, sweetest little brothers).

Francesco’s mother, La Contessa Guicciardini, then in her seventies, was still very striking. In a silver frame on Francesco’s baby grand piano was a photograph of her as a haughty young woman with a single long strand of pearls around her neck. It showed what a stunner she had once been. She had come from Naples, from a family more ancient and noble than the Guicciardini whose title only went back to the Renaissance. Like many southern Italians, she was of a superstitious nature and clung to her superstitions even as she lived among the more pragmatic and rational Florentines.

Francesco was fond of describing an incident that happened when he was a young boy and he and his mother were staying at Bagni di Lucca, then a fashionable spa in the Tuscan hills outside of Florence. One day they were having lunch on the terrace of their hotel when a carriage from Naples arrived and from it descended a Neapolitan nobleman who was widely considered to be un malòcchio, an “evil eye,” who brings misfortune wherever he goes. When La Contessa recognized him, she was beside herself. Malòcchi, according to legend, always bring tragedy to the people they encounter. However, one must be very polite and kind to them or the ensuing disaster will be even worse. So La Contessa invited the malòcchio, whose family she had known in Naples, to join them for dinner. He did and, Francesco said, his mother was at her most charming and gracious throughout the meal. But when they retired to their rooms, she was in a nervous state and forbade Francesco to undress. Still wearing a tiara and necklace, she lay down on top of her bed, her eyes open, waiting. Shortly after midnight, an earthquake shook the hotel. La Contessa grabbed Francesco and dashed to an exit. When the other guests, clad in pajamas and robes began to emerge a short time later, they found La Contessa, every diamond in place, standing at a distance, holding Francesco firmly by the hand. “How did you know?” someone asked her. “I knew,” she said.

Francesco enjoyed entertaining an international circle of friends at lunch in the elegant dining room on the piano nobile where, under the gaze of ancestral portraits, simple but excellent food was served on ancient armorial china bearing the stemma of the Guicciardini: three hunting horns on shield. Francesco sat at one end of a long table that seated eight comfortably, La Contessa at the other. The guests who sat between them were usually an interesting mix of nationalities, professions, and of diverse social backgrounds. Francesco was anything but a snob.

The first time I was among the invited, after an aperitivo in one of the sitting rooms, we moved into the dining room where we were joined by La Contessa. She strode regally into the room, took her seat, and before acknowledging the presence of the guests, turned to Francesco and enquired in a world-weary voice: “Che lingua si parla oggi? “We’re speaking English today, Mother,” Francesco replied cheerily.

When the handsome, white-jacketed manservant arrived with platters heaped with food, Francesco would always say: “Maria’s not a fancy cook, but we think her veal stew is rather good.” Maria’s stufato di vitello was excellent, and often the main course at Francesco’s lunches.

While the manservant poured wine into the crystal goblets, Francesco would say: “I hope you like this wine. It’s certainly not a great wine, but it comes from our vineyards at San Gimignano, and we find it quite pleasant.” It was, of course, a very good wine that went perfectly with Maria’s unpretentious but tasty stew.

Here is my version of Tuscan stufato di vitello:

2 lbs of 1- inch cubes of veal

¼ cup of all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon of salt

¼ teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

3 cloves of peeled garlic, sliced in thirds

6 cloves of peeled garlic

2 bay leaves

2 sprigs of rosemary

1 cup of chicken broth

1 cup of dry white wine

½ cup chopped parsley

Grated rind of 1 lemon

Heat oven to 350 degrees

In a large saucepan, heat olive oil over medium heat. Sauté sliced garlic until light brown, then discard.

Toss veal in mixture of flour, salt and pepper until thoroughly coated.

Sauté veal in saucepan over medium heat until well browned

Add chicken stock, wine, whole garlic cloves, bay leaves and rosemary

Bring to a simmer, then cover the sauce pan and transfer to oven

Bake for about two hours, or until veal is very tender.

Stir in zest of lemon and parsley before serving.

Serves 4

Palazzo Guicciardini – Anteroom of the library. Two paintings by Caravaggio are on the left above the bookcases. In the foreground is a partial view of the octagonal table, designed by the great architect Vignola, on which the historian Francesco Guicciardini wrote his histories of Florence and Italy in the 16th century.

Palazzo Guicciardini – the library that housed the most extensive collection of books in Italy on the subject of Quakerism.

Count Francesco standing in the “English Garden” of the palazzo, near the fountain with water that comes from the Boboli Gardens, a concession granted to the Guicciardini in perpetuity by Grand Duke Cosimo Primo de’Medici in 1564 when he took part of their property for the construction of the “Vasari Corridor” that runs from the Palazzo Pitti to the Palazzo Vecchio.

Count Francesco showing Simonetta Biliotti an ancient volume from the family archives.

Count Francesco wearing a beret belonging to his friend Violet Trefusis, English writer best remembered for her scandalous love affair with Vita-Sackville-West. She lived in Florence in the Villa Ombrellino, inherited from her mother, Alice Keppel, whose own scandalous love affair had been with King Edward VII.

Polenta with Shrimp and Sausage

2010-10-23T04:17:00.000-07:00

When I lived in Florence in the early 1960s, for a time I shared a maid named Aurelia with my painter friend, Flo Shoul.

Aurelia, a small woman with a hooked nose and a hump on her back, came from the Florentine suburb of San Casciano. A friend who had also grown up there remembered her and told me that during the Second World War Aurelia was the only person to go out when bombs were falling, because, she said, she was too ugly to be killed.

Twice a week, Aurelia spent a few hours changing my linen, doing my washing, sweeping and dusting and polishing, but she often mentioned that she was famous for her polenta and would like to fix it for me one day.

She kept my apartment on the top floor of a 19th century building on Via dei Vecchietti fairly spic and span. She chattered while she worked and listening to the narrative of her life, I learned a number of colorful Florentine expressions that were never used in polite company.

Every weekend, Aurelia took the train to a town on the Adriatic coast to visit her uncle, who, she claimed, had a title, was, in fact, a prince. There was nothing about Aurelia that suggested aristocratic connections, but I had heard that many Italian titles were not to be taken very seriously. I knew one pretentious young man named Baroncelli who was able to purchase the title “Barone,” and did so probably because “Barone Baroncelli” had such a distinctive ring. So, I thought, maybe Aurelia’s uncle really was a prince of one kind or another.

“Il mio zio, il principe,” as she referred to him, was elderly and not in good health and Aurelia was, she told me, the only one in the family who was kind to him. He had, she said, two very mean sisters who lived nearby, but who rarely came to see him.

Once after a weekend with her uncle, Aurelia told me that she had something very important to tell me, but that it was an enormous secret and I could not even hint of it to anyone. “I must find a very discreet lawyer,” she said, “un avvocato molto discreto.” “Why?” I asked. “Because,” she said in a whisper, “My uncle has decided to adopt me!” “Aurelia! That means you will become a principessa!” She smiled.

There was, she confided, one condition that she had to agree to before her uncle adopted her, and it had to do with his mean sisters. “After I inherit,” she said,” I must hire a long black car with a uniformed chauffer and, wearing a new pair of white gloves, go to visit his sisters. During the visit I must not take off my gloves nor sit down.” She obviously was relishing the prospect of putting the mean sisters in their place.

After she had been working for me for some time, Aurelia began to act strangely. Instead of spending several hours cleaning my apartment, she would stay the entire day. Since I paid her by the visit and not the hour, I didn’t really care, but it was disconcerting to have her there from 9 in the morning until early evening, finding things to do that did not really need to be done. I called the friend I shared her with and Flo reported the same bizarre behavior. “I can’t get rid of her!” she said. Eventually, Flo sent her Italian boyfriend, Aldo, to ask questions in the quartiere where Aurelia lived. It did not take him long to solve the mystery. To earn a little extra cash, Aurelia was renting out her room by the hour to the neighborhood whores and could not return home until their business was done.

Finally, one day when a friend from Livorno was coming to lunch, I told Aurelia that she could make her famous polenta for us. About half an hour before the guest was to arrive, I left Aurelia setting the table while her pot of polenta bubbled away in the kitchen. I went out to buy wine and bread for the meal, and when I returned my guest was at the front door. We entered the apartment together and went into the dining room. As we approached the table, I noticed, sitting next to my plate, Aurelia’s upper and lower dentures, which, I assume, she had taken out for a rest and forgotten. “Aurelia,” I called to her, “it‘s such a nice day, I think we’ll eat on the terrace instead.” A change of venue was definitely called for if we were to regain our suddenly lost appetites. I had a hard time getting out of my mind the image of Aurelia’s false teeth next to my plate even as we ate her excellent polenta on the terrace with a beautiful view over Florence. I don’t know if she ever became a princess, but I never asked her to prepare lunch again.

Here is my favorite way to prepare polenta, the delicious Italian cousin of grits:

1 lb raw extra large shrimp, peeled and de-veined
2 links of good quality smoked sausage, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil + one tablespoon
1 clove of garlic, sliced
2 tablespoons all purpose flour
1 cup milk
½ cup wine
1 cup chopped parsley

For the polenta:
4 cups water
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup of polenta or coarsely ground corn meal
4 tablespoons butter
1 cup cream cheese

While the water is coming to a boil in a large saucepan, brown sausage and garlic slices in the olive oil in a large skillet, being careful not to burn the garlic. When sausage and garlic are well browned, remove sausage to a plate and discard garlic. Toss shrimp in skillet in the now flavored oil until they are pink and beginning to curl. Remove to plate with sausage.

When the water has come to a boil, add salt and slowly whisk in the polenta or corn meal. Reduce the heat to a simmer and stir in butter. Stir occasionally while it cooks. It should be ready in about 30 minutes.

While the polenta is cooking, add the extra tablespoon of olive oil to the skillet. Slowly stir in flour over a medium heat until it begins to lightly brown. Stir in wine and then the milk while stirring vigorously until the sauce is smooth and thick.

When the polenta is tender, stir in the cream cheese over low heat.

Add the sausage and shrimp to the sauce in the skillet and gently reheat.

Sprinkle the parsley over the mixture, and serve immediately over mounds of polenta.

Serves 4

Casa Sant'Alessandro, Pomarance, 1973

2010-10-16T12:13:00.000-07:00

Terry Hughes and Isaac Bitter, contadini finti, during the vendemmia, 1973

Girando, un contadino serio, during the vendemmia, 1973

Sunset (or was it sunrise?) at Pomarance, Late Summer, 1973

Eugenio and lamb, Casa Sant'Alessandro, Pomarance, 1973

Simonetta and daughter Anna, Casa Sant'Alessandro, Pomarance, 1973, the year of the famous vendemmia

Florence, October 2009

2010-10-16T11:46:00.000-07:00

A cat in the garden of Villa I Tatti, where we had an al fresco lunch, October 15th, 2009

A view from the villa at Grassina, October 2009

Eugenio, Simonetta, John and Joel, in front of Santo Spirito, Florence, October, 2009

Eugenio's Lasagna, Grassina, October, 2009

Eugenio's Lasagna

2010-10-16T11:40:00.001-07:00

When I first lived in Italy, I had a very romantic idea of what the annual vendemmia, the grape harvest, must be like, and when people spoke of it, I imagined a pleasant outing under blue skies, shears in hand, going through vineyards in the company of picturesque peasants, snipping bunches of luscious grapes from the vines. I thought it would be a delightful lark.

In 1973, I got to take part in this annual ritual when I rented a farmhouse, Casa Sant’Alessandro, on the property of my Florentine friends, Simonetta and Eugenio Biliotti, near Volterra. I was there to finish in peace and quiet a student guidebook to Italy that I had been commissioned to write. The stone house was about a mile from the main villa where Simonetta and Eugenio spent time when they were not in Florence. The casa had running water and electricity and a great deal of charm, and in those days that was all that I required. I was there, off and on, from spring through autumn, and except for a few weeks when a shepherd and his sheep occupied the ground floor of the house, it was very peaceful and very quiet.

I had no telephone, no television; my only connection to the outside world was a Grundig shortwave radio that gave me news and music. My main way of communicating with the villa was by tying messages to the collar of “Brie,” a friendly hound that had nothing better to do than wander back and forth between the little house and the large one. Sometimes messages arrived within minutes; sometimes they took hours. That summer, the big news story from the U.S. was the investigation for fraud of Vice President Spiro Agnew. When I heard early one morning that he had resigned, I looked outside and saw Brie on my doorstep. I wrote the news on a piece of paper, attached it to her collar, and told her: “Vai alla villa!” She wagged her tail and eventually ambled off. Simonetta and Eugenio had a houseguest: Terry Hughes, a correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Terry, who usually was in the middle of breaking news stories, was sitting on the steps of the villa having his first cup of coffee when Brie arrived, and was amazed to learn this important information from a scrap of paper delivered by a dog.

Terry was back for another visit in autumn when it was time for the vendemmia and was as enthusiastic as I was about taking part in it. In fact, he had brought Mickey Mouse T-shirts for Simonetta’s several guests to wear while harvesting the grapes…why, I am not sure. The peasants, for whom the vendemmia was serious business, were not exactly welcoming to us amateurs, and the image of Mickey on our chests did nothing to win them over. Once the harvesting began, we understood why. It was not easy work, and we were mostly in the way. But we stumbled along the rows of vines, clipping as best we could the clusters of grapes and dropping them into the plastic bins we dragged behind us. Finally when the sun was about to set, we put down our shears and, exhausted, hiked back to the villa…and that is when the magic began. Eugenio and Simonetta had put up a long table in the hall of the villa and suddenly large platters of steaming lasagna and bottles of red wine, made with grapes from a previous harvest, were served and everyone who had been laboring in the fields sat down and drank and feasted. We were all ravenous and it was, by far, the most delicious lasagna I had ever tasted.

Eugenio, who over the years has developed from a very good cook to a superb and dedicated cook, says he does not remember what kind of lasagna he made on that occasion, but here is the recipe he prepared for us when last October we stayed with him and Simonetta in their 16th century villa in Grassina, just outside of Florence. It is probably even more delicious than the one I remember so fondly.

Eugenio uses RANA pre-cooked lasagna noodles, which may be difficult to find. If you must use dry pasta, de Cecco is a good brand to use. You may prepare the lasagna pasta while the sauce is cooking:

1 lb of dry lasagna sheets
Bring 6 quarts of water with one teaspoon of salt and one tablespoon of olive oil to a vigorous boil, and cook for the time recommended on the package. Stir them often to prevent them from sticking to each other. When the sheets are al dente, drain in a colander and place the sheets in a pan of cool water to keep them from drying out until you are ready for them.
For the sauce:
1 lb and 1 ounce of ground beef
¾ lb of good pork sausage, taken out of its skin
1 medium red onion, minced
1 stalk of celery, minced
1 small carrot, minced
½ teaspoon of chopped rosemary
1 cupful of dried porcini mushrooms, rehydrated with hot water
1 large can of peeled tomatoes
½ cup of extra virgin olive oil
1 cup of dry red wine
1 teaspoon of salt
½ teaspoon of freshly ground pepper
½ cup of chicken broth
1 cup of grated very good Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.
Six extra pats of butter to be added later

Heat the olive oil in a large pot and sauté over a low flame, the onion, celery and carrot until they have softened ( about 2 minutes), then add the ground beef and sausage, stirring frequently until almost all the liquid has evaporated. Stir in salt & pepper, and, before the mixture begins to stick to the bottom of the pan, add the wine and keep stirring until it is almost all evaporated. Add the chopped rosemary and after 20 seconds the peeled tomatoes and the chicken broth. Cover the pot and let simmer over a very low flame for at least 40 minutes, stirring occasionally.

For the Béchamel:
5 tablespoons of butter
4 tablespoons of all-purpose flour
4 cups of milk
2 teaspoons of salt
½ teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg

Melt the butter over medium-low heat in a saucepan. Add the flour and stir until it is smooth.
Increase heat to medium and, continuing to stir, cook until the mixture turns a light golden color (6 to 7 minutes).

Heat the milk in a separate pan over medium-low heat until it is almost at a boil, then whisk in the hot milk a cup at a time to the butter mixture until it is very smooth. Cook for another 10 minutes while stirring constantly, then remove from heat and stir in salt and nutmeg. If the sauce is too dense, stir in a little more heated milk.

Smear the bottom of a large, flat baking dish with butter. Then place a sheet of the pasta in the dish, cover with spoonfuls of the sauce, then the Béchamel, then the cheese, then another sheet of the pasta, and sauce and Béchamel and cheese, repeating these layers until you have filled the pan.

Place in 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes. Serves 8

Original drawing by Chas Laborde (1886-1941) "La faim justifie les moyens"

2010-10-10T17:49:00.000-07:00

Tournedos Rossini

2010-10-09T13:37:00.000-07:00

Tournedos Rossini

In the late 1960s, for about 100 francs (the equivalent of 20 dollars), it was possible to enjoy a good meal with decent wine at most of the best restaurants in Paris. Each month one of my colleagues and I set aside that amount to treat ourselves at one of these grand establishments. We were careful in ordering, but still had some memorable meals within our budget.

Of course, even then, it was possible to spend a great deal more in the most celebrated Parisian restaurants. An Englishman I knew, whose crisp accent and nose for successful potboilers had helped propel him to a rather successful career in New York publishing, used to visit Paris once or twice a year and generously invite me to a sumptuous meal on his expense account. He only frequented restaurants with three Michelin stars, which was fortunate because I found his pomposity much easier to bear over a splendid meal in a fancy restaurant where his pretensions often went quite well with the décor. We pulled out all stops at places like Lasserre and Tour d’Argent. Once, in the days before credit cards, when he had invited me to celebrate my birthday at the Grand Vefour, he realized at the end of the meal that he did not have enough cash to pay for both of us, so I had to pony up for my share, but it was well worth it.

Lasserre was then one of the most admired restaurants in France. A beautiful establishment featuring lavish table settings with gilded pheasants perched among the elegant crystal and ornate silverware, it also had a retractable roof. The Englishman, who was flirting with the drug culture, told me that his New York friends who smoked pot recommended dining there because, if the fumes got too thick, one could ask the waiter to open the roof and let in some fresh air.

It was with the Englishman chez Lasserre that I had the richest and most expensive meal I had ever eaten in Paris. Alas, it was so rich and accompanied by so much good wine that an hour later I was leaning over a toilet bowl, flushing away hundreds of francs worth of food and drink. It was a good lesson. What a horrible waste, I thought, and resolved thereafter to follow a course of moderation in all things, even when presented with the possibility of reckless overindulgence.

I would not have dreamed of attempting to prepare at home most of the sophisticated dishes I discovered in the sacrosanct temples of French gastronomy, but one dish that was very popular on luxe French menus of the 60s and 70s was the opulent but fairly simple “Tournedos Rossini,” a dish reputedly invented in the 19th century at the Café Anglais in Paris for the gourmand composer.

4 filets of tenderloin at least one inch thick, seasoned well with salt and pepper and brought to room temperature

4 ¼ inch thick slices of foie gras with truffles (These can be hard to find. We usually buy a couple of tins of Georges Bruck or Rougié foie gras with truffles in the duty free shop at Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris. They come in a triangular shaped tin and each tin holds two fairly thick slices of foie gras, perfect for this recipe.)

¼ cup beef or veal stock

½ cup of Madeira

4 slices of good quality white bread without crusts and trimmed to approximately the
size of the filets of beef

1 tablespoon of butter

1 tablespoon of olive oil

Reduce the stock in a saucepan over moderate heat until it is a sticky, thin sauce.
Melt the butter in a skillet and fry the bread slices in it until they are golden brown. Set aside in warming oven.

Add olive oil to residue in skillet and sear the filets, about three minutes on each side, until they are medium rare. Set aside in warming oven.

Sear the foie gras for about 30 seconds on each side and remove to warming oven.

Deglaze the skillet with the Madeira and add the reduced stock.

When this is done, put the fried bread on plates, top with filets, then place a slice of foie gras with truffles on the top of each. Drizzle sauce over each serving. Serves 4

Beating Austerity in the Kitchen (More or Less) - A blog about food and the people I've shared it with.

2010-02-09T12:49:00.000-08:00

When I was on liberty in London as an N. R. O. T. C. midshipman more than half a century ago, I bought an English cookbook because I was charmed by its title: Beating Austerity in the Kitchen. It sounded so stiff-upper-lip, that much-admired quality of the English. The Second World War had been over for almost a decade, but life in Britain still seemed grim. London was pocked with bombed-out ruins, drabness was pervasive, and the food I encountered in the restaurants and hotels was hardly edible.

I stayed in a small hotel near Russell Square where breakfast was included in the modest cost of the room. Each morning at seven, the proprietor set out racks of cold, scorched toast and poured thin, lukewarm milk over bowls of cornflakes which by a quarter past seven were unrecognizable as such.

Buying a cookbook in post-war England was perverse, bordering on the masochistic. Beating Austerity in the Kitchen was a thin volume that might have been mistaken for a slender first book of poems by a chronically depressed poet had it not been for its bright yellow dust jacket festooned with red and blue rosettes. It contained a lot of information about preserving, storing, and stretching food that was still being rationed, and was written for the British housewife accustomed to preparing and eating the kinds of dishes Cyril Connolly had in mind when he wrote: “Oh, the superb wretchedness of English food, how many foreigners has it daunted, and what a subtle glow of nationality one feels in ordering a dish that one knows will be bad and being able to eat it!”

Apart from its gaudy dust jacket, the showiest thing about this modest book was the name of its author: Lady Peacock. Since by now the good Lady more than likely “has gone to get the prize for domestic virtue” (the translation of an inscription I once saw on an ancient tomb in Florence), she probably will not object if I borrow her title for these recipes my partner, John Copenhaver, and I have enjoyed through the years and would like to share with our friends in this new Age of Austerity when we may not be eating out quite as often.

Some of the dishes are a little extravagant to fit comfortably in a blog with a title that suggests restraint and frugality, but if you prepare them in your own kitchen, consider what you will save on tips alone.