Anna Gosetti della Salda

Anna Gosetti della Salda (1918-2011) was an extraordinary woman.

She published the ultimate book of regional Italian recipes, Le Ricette Regionali Italiane, that is the mainstay of Italian cooks everywhere. Even Michelin-starred chefs in Italy go into rhapsody when talking about this book.

First published in 1967, it's never been out of print (current edition: 17th, 2001.) It was printed out of her own publishing house of whose catalog it's the sole item. She has never authorized a translation.

She made a "small concession" in 2002 allowing a pronunciation guide in Japanese to be added as an insert because "if they were going to go to all that trouble to learn Italian, she would help."

It's 1206 pages long nearly 5 lbs featuring 2174 recipes — 13 are "base recipes" (e.g. besciamella = bechamél.)

She made four arduous trips up and down the "Italian boot" in the days when such trips were absurdly difficult. She did it as a single woman (never married) and she was adamant about having her own way in everything from the fonts to the paper to the illustrations.

It's a product of a singular mind which admits no compromises.

The regions of Italy are organized in the order that a theoretical motorist could actually traverse them. They form a Hamiltonian Path which warms the cockles of the CC's mathematical heart. (The two island regions of Sicily and Sardinia come last.)

There is no table of contents — in her own words, "Why have it when the indices are perfect?"

Indeed the indices are perfect. All 116 pages of them. Each recipe is numbered. There are two indices organized by "region" and "analytics" (theme/topic). There's a meta-index of one page that tells you where to go find the indexes. The end of each of the regional indices has a excellent curated list of the "wine types" of that region. The cross-indexing admits no mistakes.

The paper is deliberately yellow (to indicate "old school" yellowing) and the illustrations are black and white line drawings. (Her initial career was in advertising. She opened her own agency. The book was published when she was nearly 50!)

Each recipe not only has exact details (tested, of course) but also any regional and family variants.

Even though the CC speaks no Italian, he can handle recipes in the language — limited vocabulary and content;  context makes things "obvious". The illustrations help. You are left in no doubt whatsoever about what the recipe entails.

The CC's favorite part is an excerpt from an interview she gave when she was nearly 90, "I recently read the book one more time, very carefully, just to find out what new criticisms I might have. I'm my most severe critic, yet I can't help admitting I did such a good job. I looked deeply into every recipe and technique; there's no room for superficiality in my work. If I were to start again I would do just as I have."

The book is just a staggering masterpiece.

Pomiane's Tarragon

The CC has mentioned Edouard de Pomiane before.

Whenever the CC reads all these articles about city-slickers waxing eloquent about gardens and farming, he is reminded of a wonderful paragraph from Cooking with Pomiane. The recipe is "New Potatoes with Tarragon".

I used to fancy myself as a botanist, but my illusions were shattered when I asked a charming young saleswoman for seeds of parsley, chervil and tarragon. "Tarragon does not produce a fertile seed," she replied. "If you want a plant, here you are. In three years it will die. Come back again and see me."

R.I.P. Marcella

One of the doyennes of Italian cooking, Marcella Hazan has passed on.

Anybody who has cooked from any of her books know her almost personally. The harrying tone, the quest for perfection, the quiet disappointment when the ingredients are not up to the mark and the absolute insistence that there be a feast on the table most nights no matter what the ingredients or circumstances.

Her recipes substitute freely but hold on the Platonic ideal. Ignorance is not tolerated and idiocy even less so.

You can clearly hear the unique voice of a woman who smoked to beat the band and preferred Scotch to wine and yet had a most impressive palate.

As a teacher, she understood indolence and the time pressures of modern life, and like a grandmother, indulged her wavering students.

When you are unable to get good fresh tomatoes, rather than cook with watery, tasteless ones, it's best to turn to the dependable canned variety.

Even when fresh porcini -- wild boletus edulis mushrooms -- are available, the dried version compels consideration ...

And possibly the most accurate (and liberating!) statement about pasta of all time:

There is not the slightest justification for the currently fashionable notion that 'fresh' pasta is preferable to factory-made dry pasta. One is not better than the other, they are simply different... They are seldom interchangeable, but in terms of absolute quality, they are fully equal.

But not too indolent!

She tried "again and again" to square the principles of Italian cooking with microwave. Happily, all her attempts were utter failures.

You'd learn more about cooking vegetables from her almost twenty pages of detailed notes than any class or even in a professional kitchen. Her recipe for chicken with two lemons (plus salt and pepper, nothing else!) is a legend.

There are darker sides too. She was oddly uncurious about the science of food — a most shocking revelation about someone with a doctorate in natural sciences and biology. She intuited the role of mushrooms in what we now call umami but only understood it late in life. There are odd generalizations and superstitions. Explanations call upon experience rather than something more fundamental in nature.

However, these are all quibbles.

What mattered most of all is that her recipes have a tendency to be magnificent successes. The hit ratio is the highest of all the cookbooks that the CC has ever owned. "Let's look up Marcella" is practically a cliché around this household.

The CC definitely owes her a debt of gratitude and it's a pity he never met her. She will definitely be missed.

Ciao bella!

Butter Massage

From the inimitable Julia Child:

"Not everything I do with my roast chicken is necessarily scientific. For instance, I always give my bird a generous butter massage before I put it in the oven. Why? Because I think the chicken likes it -- and, more important, I like to give it."

Julia Child

It seems customary to report on the subject thanks to the movie made by the idiotic-beyond-idiotic, border-line retarded "chick-flick twit". No, the CC has not seen the movie but we're gonna talk about the cookbook author and not the persona or the chick-flick or the twit.

It is no great secret that most foodies have read Julia Child.

Opinions differ on the subject, and the CC has definitely besmirched the woman's reputation on her favorite subject of omelettes (with perfectly good science and reason.)

Arguably, you would do better to learn French cooking by consulting Anne Willan or Richard Olney.

And she was no more "authentic" than Paris Hilton. She wore wigs during her show and had two face-lifts. Chances are they don't tell you those things during the movie. Nor do the asinine foodies bother with such blunt brute facts during their wild adoration bordering on hagiography.

But there would never have been an Olney or a Willan without a Julia Child. Plus, we're here to judge her on the basis of her books not her vanity.

What matters is the sheer joy of food as well as pure unabashed joie de vivre that leaps off every page. It's opinionated, detail-oriented, definitely old-fashioned. It's not "pitched" to a "marketing control group". It's tone is friendly if bossy; accurate if opinionated.

Certainly, some of the equipment has dated. We can do better in that domain, and she'd agree herself. But her dictum that happiness is as much in the doing as the final result is completely on target.

Above all, there is the sensual love of food and life. She was sui generis and so are the books.

It shows. It shows in spades. You can't fake this.

If ever there were books that just by the sheer forceful power of the author's personality could dispel the blues, it's these ones. There are few better things worth doing in life that spending an afternoon on the couch with Julia. (And yes, she'd howl in mirth at the smuttiness of that pun!)

She was right about butter too.

Kikunae Ikeda

Who?

One of the two greatest scientific contributors to food (the other would be Louis-Camille Maillard.) Unfortunately, this is the one that the world has never heard of.

He discovered the concept of umami by identifying glutamic acid as the common component of meat, kombu (type of seaweed) and tomatoes!

Louis-Camille Maillard

One of the (two) greatest contributors to the science of food. He first identified the concept of what is now called the Maillard Reaction.

Buñuel's Food Satire

A preoccupation with food, and discussions on food is a marking trait of the bourgeoise. Nobody understood better than Buñuel that food isn't just nourishment but an external symbol of attitudes of a society.

Virtually every movie he made included vicious satire on the strange relationship between the two. Needless to say, the food was always deliciously filmed.

The best scenes in the oeuvre:

The Exterminating Angel

Magnificent dinner scene with the waiter stumbling. Revealed as "modernist theater". Slow devolution of civilized society into animalistic eaters. Bonus scene: the lamb.

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoise

Food, pretension, death; more food, more pretension, more death; embarassment while eating, dying while eating, embarassed dying while eating.

Viridiana

The beggars enacting The Last Supper. Photograph taken by the beggarwoman with her "winking" pudendum. Banned by the Church. Need the CC say more?

Variation

The CC's Dad suggested he do a post on this subject, and it's a terribly important subject. The CC is mortified that he didn't think of it himself.

What's the subject again? Variation.

There are two approaches to this subject, and we're going to explore them logically.

The first is that the chef is going to produce an exact product, and that everything is in the service of that. The CC has pontificated about the subject enough, and if you've lost your memory or your marbles, you can read about it here.

The second is that the chef explore the local variation in ingredients, and shape the recipe to his or her environment. Even to the point, the chef shapes the recipe to his or her mood.

Are you in a spicy mood tonight? Well, the CC doesn't know, my love, but he sure wants to find out how spicy you are.

Of course, this is a way for lazy people to be, well, lazy, but there's a difference between a minor variation based on a difference in ingredients, and just not bothering to follow the recipe at all.

What the CC is getting at is simple. Each recipe has a core, call it a soul if you will. Violate what makes the recipe tick and the CC will call you lazy; a mere variation at the edges is a variation. Of course, true mastery means that you make every variation come out exactly the way you want it to every single time.

There is an inherent tension between mastery and variation. The CC claims that you should just embrace it.

Kingsley Amis on Tipple

Amis, who was always seriously committed to the fine art of bibbering (a.k.a. topering), gives us a set of general principles on drink.

As we might expect from the author of the wondrous hangover scene in Lucky Jim, there is more to these aphorisms than meets the ear. They range from the tippling staple ("quantity over quality") to the wickedly acidic (see G.P.5.) Above all, they express a coherent world view (see G.P.7) that distinguish him from the average columnist.

His three pamphlets on the art of the piss-up ("food is the curse of the drinking classes") are well worth checking out.

G.P.1: Up to a point (i.e. short of offering your guests one of those Balkan plonks marketed as wine, Cyprus sherry, poteen and the like), go for quantity rather than quality. Most people would rather have two glasses of ordinary decent port than one of a rare vintage. On the same reasoning, give them big drinks rather than small -- with exceptions to be noted later. Serious drinkers will be pleased and reassured, unserious ones will not be offended, and you will use up less chatting time going around to recharge glasses.

G.P.2: Any drink traditionally accompanied by a bit of fruit or vegetable is worth trying with a spot of the juice thrown in as well.

G.P.3: It is more important that a cold drink be as cold as possible than that it should be as concentrated as possible.

G.P.4: For any liquor that is going to be mixed with fruit juices, vegetable juices, etc., sweetening, strongly flavored cordials and the like, go for the cheapest reliable article. Do not waste your Russian or Polish vodka, etc.

G.P.5: The alcohol in any bubbly drink will reach you faster than in its still version. Hence, or partly hence, the popularity of champagne at weddings and other festivities.

G.P.6: With drinks containing fruit (other than the decorative or olfactory slice of lemon, orange, etc.) it is really worthwhile to soak the fruit in some of the liquor for at least three hours beforehand.

G.P.7: Never despise a drink because it is easy to make and/or uses commercial mixes. Unquestioning devotion to authenticity is, in any department of life, a mark of the naïve -- or worse.

G.P.8: Careful preparation will render a poor wine just tolerable and a fine wine excellent. Skimping it will diminish a pretty fair wine to all right and a superb wine to merely bloody good. That is about as much difference as it will make. Much more important is price, which is normally a very reliable indicator of quality.

G.P.9: He who truly believes he has a hangover has no hangover.

G.P.10: Everything fattens you.

Bellini-ssimo

Named to honor the famous opera by Bellini, Pasta alla Norma is a cult Sicilian dish.

Chances are that the dish was already a Sicilian staple but it took the eyes of the theater director, Nino Martoglio, to declare the dish "una vera Norma". In his eyes, the dish and the opera matched each other's perfection.

What eggplants and tomatoes and ricotta salata have to do with an aging druidess whose lover runs out on her with a younger woman, and who declares this all her fault, and decides to immolate herself with him is best left to the imagination.

And the pleasures of the dish are definitely far from the "Casta Diva" of the opera.

Food is anything but chaste; food is pure unashamed unabashed sensuality. The idea of food being "chaste" is as ludicrous as ludicrous can be.

Not to mention that the pairing of food and tragedy is a bit of a travesty too. Try telling your dinner guests next time that the food portion of the dinner will end in a tragedy next time. Drop the CC a line if that works out for you.

Pairing of dinner and tragedy? Probably takes a particularly Teutonic mind to do so. Definitely un-Sicilian.

However, if we can accept the metaphor that there is something quite lovely about both this dish and the opera, then in the spirit of that mindset, the CC can begin to show you how to make the dish.

Just like a dramatic coloratura soprano is non-negotiable in the opera's title role, you must use ricotta salata. It's a salted cheese made from sheep's milk but pressed (sort of like a very dry feta but less crumbly.)

If you don't use it, the CC will find out about it, and come by and immolate you.

Ingredients

2 large eggplants (sliced vertically; see here)

1 large onion
4 cloves garlic (finely diced)
8-10 tomatoes (or use canned "San Marzano" peeled tomatoes)
3 dried red peppers

basil (snipped)
sea salt
black pepper

ricotta salata (grated or just chopped)

Recipe

The recipe proceeds in three separate parts all of which you will "assemble" at the end. They are respectively: eggplants (two different sizes, fried), tomato sauce, and the pasta.

If you use fresh tomatoes, they must be peeled.

Y'all already know how to make a tomato sauce but the pictures are repeated for emphasis.

Heavily salt the eggplants, and let them sit for at least an hour. They will let out copious moisture which you must discard.

Then you must wash each slice individually to remove all the salt.

Half the eggplants must be cut into "small" pieces, and the rest into "large" pieces. See below for a picture.

Fry the garlic.

And the onions, and the dried red chilli peppers. Fish the chilli peppers out at the end of the frying.

Add the tomatoes.

Let the tomatoes reduce at a very low heat. Yeah, this takes time. Go drink a martini or something.

Add the snipped basil leaves towards the end.

Fry the smaller pieces of the eggplants.

Push them to a side, and fry the larger pieces too.

The dish is a straightforward assembly of the al dente pasta, the two kinds of eggplants, the tomato sauce, and the ricotta salata on top, garnished with basil leaves.

Part of the pleasure of this dish is that you leave the different components separate; a sort of "mix 'n match" of different textures and tastes. Exactly the same thing that Norma's ex-lover, Pollione, was attempting with his chippy on the side except things didn't quite go his way, and he got scorched.

Pasta alla Norma

Characters

In the world of the interest groups, sub-cultures and Madison Ave., it is hard to believe that true characters ever walked the earth.

One of the finest is Pellegrino Artusi, an Italian who wrote the first pan-Italian cookbook barely twenty years after the unification of Italy.

It is important to remember that Italy was comprised of a whole bunch of nation states (no different than Greece or India) and that there was no such thing as "Italian" cuisine (and there still isn't.)

Anyway, La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiare bene (The Science of Cooking and the Art of Eating Well) is a masterpiece. It is a delight to read, and a delight to follow.

Modern ideas like weights and measures are simply non-existent. You need to be familiar with the context to start with. (Even in a modern setting, this is not too hard if you know what you're doing.)

But best of all, our guide is a raconteur par excellence. We get a lovely recipe of a minestrone which starts by describing the author's near-death experience by his ingesting a minestrone at Livorno. He thought it was cholera when he spent the night expelling fluids from two parts of his body and having to walk to the communal toilet, but it later turned out not to be cholera after all. So delighted is the author by the fact of not being dead that he follows it up in an adjacent sentence by not only telling you that he fled to Florence but also by giving you good advice of how best to chop up the onions that are needed for the recipe. And then the recipe continues for a whole page.

Madison Avenue, eat your heart out! Those interest groups never spent a night in a communal shitter nor ever started a recipe with one.

Shocking? Disgusting? Deliciously delightful?

You pick.

From start to finish, it's not just a compendium of recipes from all over Italy but it's filled with total and utter bullshit, fairly dubious scientific insight, and a style that would drive modern editors crazy. Nevertheless, it's also imparts a true understanding of how people actually cook (bullshit and all), and hence implicitly, what they are trying to achieve as a precise product.

Your knowledge of Italiana is incomplete without it, and the CC strongly urges anyone with an interest in Italian cooking that they get a copy pronto.

Pellegrino Artusi's Minestrone

Start by making the usual meat broth, and cooking in it a handful of shelled fresh beans. If the beans are dry, then simmer them in water until they soften. Then cut some Savoy cabbage, spinach, and a little chard into thin slices, and soak them in cold water. Then, to get the water of the vegetables, place them on the fire in a dry saucepan. Drain the contents well, pressing them firmly with a wooden spoon to get rid of the excess water. For a minestrone that serves four to five people, finely chop 40 grams of fatty prosciutto, a clove of garlic, and a sprig of parsley, and sauté them together. Add this to the saucepan, along with some celery and carrots, one potato, one zucchini, and very little onion, all cut into short, thin slices. Add the beans, and if you wish, some pork rind (as some people like to do), and a bit of tomato sauce or tomato paste. Season with salt and pepper and cook in the broth. As a last ingredient add enough rice to absorb most of the liquid, and before removing the minestrone from the fire throw in a good pinch of Parmesan cheese.

I should warn you that this is not a soup for weak stomachs.

Delacroix's Lobsters

One of the many masterpieces by the French Romantic, Eugène Delacroix, his "Still life with lobsters" (1826-27.)

Before anything else, take a good luck at the picture again.

First, there's a landscape receding into the horizon in true perspective. You see the horses and the huntsmen in the background; you see the muskets and the game bags; you see the shot hare, some other game birds, a pheasant.

And you see a lobster.

What on earth is a lobster doing in a scene about game? This makes no sense.

And even more bizarrely the lobster is obviously cooked (from the color), and the rest of the game is clearly raw.

Shades of Surrealism a century before it took root? A Dali before his time? Trying to outdo Nerval?

Not quite.

To understand the image, we need to take a tour to Galen (129 A.D.), an ancient physician whose theories dominated medicine and food for more than a millenium.

Each person supposedly has a temperament composed of four elements: air (warm and wet), earth (cold and dry), fire (hot and dry) and water (cold and wet.)

Likewise each food had a characteristic warmth and coldness, dryness and wetness. More importantly, cooking could transform this.

The goal was balance. (The Chinese, independently, came up with a similar scheme.)

Before you rush out to totally declare "scientific" bullshit on these concepts, permit the CC to forward two thoughts.

One is that this idea of balance is not particularly different from your modern idea of "balancing" proteins, carbohydrates and fats. The details are different but the idea of "balance" has propagated to modern times just in a different guise.

Secondly, if you believe in "vitamins" (which is a buncha catchall compounds which are totally unrelated), you're basically just as unscientific.

(Lest the above not be clear, nobody is denying the importance of the various "vitamin" compounds for the human body. What is being denied is that they have anything to do with each other. They don't. They are lumped together because they've always been lumped together, and nothing could be more unscientific than that. Even the name is bullshit because it comes from "vital amine" and yet, vitamin C is not an amine at all.)

So a lot of bad blather has propagated to modern times under a "scientific" guise.

Back to the original Galen balance. Whatever you feel about Galen, you are going to deal with it in an artistic context which is metaphorical not scientific.

The lobsters (cold and wet) are there to balance out the game (hares and jays - warm and dry.) The pheasant is provided as an idea of the "ideal" because it was considered the perfect balanced food. The metaphor of the soaring wing of the pheasant should be reasonably obvious in this context.

Like most imagery that comes out of a medieval context, Delacroix's is rather sophisticated. And it behooves us to understand where it came from, and where it is headed later in the context of surrealism.

Coffee Addiction?

Somewhere roughly between 1732 and 1734, Bach wrote, essentially, a miniature comic opera, popularly known as the Coffee Cantata (BWV 211.)

Featuring such lovely lyrics as "Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht" ("Be still, stop chattering"), it's basically an ode to the trials and tribulations of coffee addiction.

The mini-cantata ends with the trio which exults in the fact that "drinking coffee is natural".

And never a truer word was said.

Day Blooms Agen

Once again, on Bloomsday, an excerpt from the CC's beloved Ulysses. This time from Joyce's wonderful take on the Lestrygonians.

After all there's a lot in that vegetarian fine flavour of things from the earth garlic, of course, it stinks Italian organgrinders crisp of onions, mushrooms truffles. Pain to animal too. Pluck and draw fowl. Wretched brutes there at the cattlemarket waiting for the poleaxe to split their skulls open. Moo. Poor trembling calves. Meh. Staggering bob. Bubble and squeak. Butchers' buckets wobble lights. Give us that brisket off the hook. Plup. Rawhead and bloody bones. Flayed glasseyed sheep hung from their haunches, sheepsnouts bloodypapered snivelling nosejam on sawdust. Top and lashers going out. Don't maul them pieces, young one.

Hot fresh blood they prescribe for decline. Blood always needed. Insidious. Lick it up, smoking hot, thick sugary. Famished ghosts.

Ah, I'm hungry.

He entered Davy Byrne's. Moral pub. He doesn't chat. Stands a drink now and then. But in leapyear once in four. Cashed a cheque for me once.

What will I take now? He drew his watch. Let me see now. Shandygaff?

-- Hellow, Bloom! Nosey Flynn said from his nook.

-- Hello, Flynn.

-- How's things?

-- Tiptop... Let me see. I'll take a glass of burgundy and... let me see.

Sardines on the shelves. Almost taste them by looking. Sandwich? Ham and his descendants mustered and bred there. Potted meats. What is home without Plumtree's potted meat? Incomplete. What a stupid ad! Under the obituary notices they stuck it. All up a plumtree Dignam's potted meat. Cannibals would with lemon and rice. White missionary too salty. Like pickled pork. Expect the chief consumes the parts of honour. Ought to be tough from exercise. His wives in a row to watch the effect. There was a right royal old nigger. Who ate or something the somethings of the reverend Mr MacTrigger. With it an abode of bliss. Lord knows what concoction. Cauls mouldy tripes windpipes faked and minced up. Puzzle find the meat. Kosher. No meat and milk together. Hygiene that was what they call now. Yom Kippur fast spring cleaning of inside. Peace and war depend on some fellow's digestion. Religions. Christmas turkeys and geese. Slaughter of innocents. Eat, drink and be merry. Then casual wards full after. Heads bandaged. Cheese digests all but itself. Mighty cheese.

-- Have you a cheese sandwich?

-- Yes, sir.

Like a few olives too if they had them. Italian I prefer. Good glass of burgundy; take away that. Lubricate. A nice salad, cool as a cucumber. Tom Kernan can dress. Puts gusto into it. Pure olive oil. Milly served me that cutlet with a sprig of parsley. Take one Spanish onion. God made food, the devil the cooks. Devilled crab.

…

…

…

Wine soaked and softened rolled pith of bread mustard a moment mawkish cheese. Nice wine it is. Taste it better because I'm not thirsty. Bath of course does that. Just a bite or two. Then about six o'clock I can. Six, six. Time will be gone then. She...

Mild fire of wine kindled his veins. I wanted that badly. Felt so off colour. His eyes unhungrily saw shelves of tins, sardines, gaudy lobsters' claws. All the odd things people pick up for food. Out of shells, periwinkles with a pin, off trees, snails out of the ground the French eat, out of the sea with bait on a hook. Silly fish learn nothing in a thousand years. If you didn't know risky putting anything into your mouth. Poisonous berries. Johnny Magories. Roundness you think good. Gaudy colour warns you off. One fellow told another and so on. Try it on the dog first. Led on by the smell or the look. Tempting fruit. Ice cones. Cream. Instinct. Orangegroves for instance. Need artificial irrigation. Bleibtreustrasse. Yes but what about oysters? Unsightly like a clot of phlegm. Filthy shells. Devil to open them too. Who found them out? Garbage, sewage they feed on. Fizz and Red bank oysters. Effect on the sexual. Aphrodis. He was in the Red bank this morning. Was he oyster old fish at table. Perhaps he young flesh in bed. No. June has no ar no oysters. But there are people like tainted game. Jugged hare. First catch your hare. Chinese eating eggs fifty years old, blue and green again. Dinner of thirty courses. Each dish harmless might mix inside. Idea for a poison mystery. That archduke Leopold was it? No. Yes, or was it Otto one of those Habsburgs? Or who was it used to eat the scruff off his own head? Cheapest lunch in town. Of course, aristocrats. Then the others copy to be in the fashion. Milly too rock oil and flour. Raw pastry I like myself. Half the catch of oysters they throw back in the sea to keep up the price. Cheap. No one would buy. Caviare. Do the grand. Hock in green glasses. Swell blowout. Lady this. Powdered bosom pearls. The élite. Crème de la crème. They want special dishes to pretend they're. Hermit with a platter of pulse keep down the stings of the flesh. Know me come eat with me. Royal sturgeon. High sheriff, Coffey, the butcher, right to venisons of the forest from his ex. Send him back the half of a cow. Spread I saw down in the Master of the Rolls' kitchen area. Whitehatted chef like a rabbi. Combustible duck. Curly cabbage à la duchesse de Parme. Just as well to write it on the bill of fare so you can know what you've eaten too many drugs spoil the broth. I know it myself. Dosing it with Edwards' desiccated soup. Geese stuffed silly for them. Lobsters boiled alive: Do ptake some ptarmigan. Wouldn't mind being a waiter in a swell hotel. Tips, evening dress, halfnaked ladies. May I tempt you to a little more filleted lemon sole, miss Dubedat? Yes, do bedad. And she did bedad. Huguenot name I expect that. A miss Dubedat lived in Killiney I remember. Du, de la, French. Still it's the same fish, perhaps old Micky Hanlon of Moore street ripped the guts out of making money, hand over fist, finger in fishes' gills, can't write his name on a cheque, think he was painting the landscape with his mouth twisted. Moooikill A Aitcha Ha. Ignorant as a kish of brogues, worth fifty thousand pounds.

Stuck on the pane two flies buzzed, stuck.

Glowing wine on his palate lingered swallowed. Crushing in the winepress grapes of Burgundy. Sun's heat it is. Seems to a secret touch telling me memory. Touched his sense moistened remembered. Hidden under wild ferns on Howth. Below us bay sleeping sky. No sound. The sky. The bay purple by the Lion's head. Green by Drumleck. Yellowgreen towards Sutton. Fields of undersea, the lines faint brown in grass, buried cities. Pillowed on my coat she had her hair, earwigs In the heather scrub my hand under her nape, you'll toss me all. O wonder! Coolsoft with ointments her hand touched me, caressed: her eyes upon me did not turn away. Ravished over her I lay, full lips full open, kissed her mouth. Yum. Softly she gave me in my mouth the seedcake warm and chewed. Mawkish pulp her mouth had mumbled sweet and sour with spittle. Joy: I ate it: joy. Young life, her lips that gave me pouting. Soft, warm, sticky grumjelly lips. Flowers her eyes were, take me, willing eyes. Pebbles fell. She lay still. A goat. No-one. High on Ben Howth rhododendrons a nannygoat walking surefooted, dropping currants. Screened under ferns she laughed warmfolded. Wildly I lay on her, kissed her; eyes, her lips, her stretched neck, beating, woman s breasts full in her blouse of nun's veiling, fat nipples upright. Hot I tongued her. She kissed me. I was kissed. All yielding she tossed my hair. Kissed, she kissed me.

Me. And me now.

The Ballad of Bouillabaisse

A certain William Makepeace Thackeray was certainly a food lover. We've already met his Ode to Curry.

A Street there is in Paris famous,
For which no rhyme our language yields,
Rue Neuve de petits Champs its name is-
The New Street of the Little Fields;
And there's an inn, not rich and splendid,
But still in comfortable case--
The which in youth I oft attended,
To eat a bowl of Bouillabaisse.

This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is--
A sort of soup, or broth, or brew,
Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes,
That Greenwich never could outdo;
Green herbs, red peppers, muscles, saffern,
Soles, onions, garlic, roach, and dace;
All these you eat at Terre's tavern,
In that one dish of Bouillabaisse.

Indeed, a rich and savory stew 't is;
And true philosophers, methinks,
Who love all sorts of natural beauties,
Should love good victuals and good drinks.
And Cordelier or Benedictine
Might gladly, sure, his lot embrace,
Nor find a fast-day too afflicting,
Which served him up a Bouillabaisse.

I wonder if the house still there is?
Yes, here the lamp is as before;
The smiling, red-cheeked ecaillere is
Still opening oysters at the door.
Is Terre still alive and able?
I recollect his droll grimace;
He'd come and smile before your table,
And hoped you like your Bouillabaisse.

We enter; nothing's changed or older.
"How's Monsieur Terre, waiter, pray?"
The waiter stares and shrugs his shoulders ;--
"Monsieur is dead this many a day."
"It is the lot of saint and sinner.
So honest Terre's run his race!"
"What will Monsieur require for dinner?"
"Say, do you still cook Bouillabaisse?"

"Oh, oui, Monsieur," 's the waiter's answer;
"Quel vin Monsieur desire-t-il ?"
"Tell me a good one." "That I can, sir;
The Chambertin with yellow seal."
"So Terre's gone," I say, and sink in
My old accustomed corner-place;
"He's done with feasting and wine drinking,
With Burgundy and Bouillabaisse."

My old accustomed corner here is--
The table still is in the nook;
Ah! vanished many a busy year is,
This well-known chair since last I took.
When first I saw ye, Cari luoghi,
I'd scarce a beard upon my face,
And now a grizzled, grim old fogy,
I sit and wait for Bouillabaisse.

Where are you, old companions trusty
Of early days, here met to dine?
Come, waiter! quick, a flagon crusty
I'll pledge them in the good old wine.
The kind old voices and old faces
My memory can quick retrace;
Around the board they take their places,
And share the wine and Bouillabaisse.

There's Jack has made a wondrous marriage;
There's laughing Tom is laughing yet;
There's brave Augustus drives his carriage;
There's poor old Fred in the Gazette;
On James' head the grass is growing:
Good Lord! the world has wagged apace
Since here we sat the Claret flowing,
And drank, and ate the Bouillabaisse.

Ah me! how quick the days are flitting!
I mind me of a time that's gone,
When here I'd sit, as now I'm sitting,
In this same place--but not alone.
A fair young form was nestled near me,
A dear, dear face looked fondly up,
And sweetly spoke and smiled to cheer me.
--There's no one now to share my cup.

I drink it as the Fates ordain it.
Come, fill it, and have done with rhymes;
Fill up the lonely glass, and drain it
In memory of dear old times.
Welcome the wine, whate'er the seal is;
And sit you down and say your grace
With thankful heart, whate'er the meal is.
here comes the smoking Bouillabaisse!

Food Art?

Super kitschy perhaps, but made entirely out of food so there seems to be a vivid imagination at work.

Artist called Carl Warner.

The last one reminds the CC of The Owl and the Pussycat.

On Bouillabaisse

Right after she gives the recipe, the lovable Paula Wolfert had something to say in her book "Mediterranean Cooking" on why one could never make a true bouillabaisse in America.

1. For a true bouillabaisse, people will tell you that it must be made in sight of the Mediterranean and, at the very least, cooked within 100 kilometres of Marseilles. There are even purists who proclaim that the water in the soup must be taken from the fishing grounds off Cacalaire. The fact that this air and these waters are now polluted is, to the fanatic gastronome, utterly beside the point.
   
   
2. For a true bouillabaisse, as I noted above, you need rascasse. A scorpion fish is hideous and you should touch it unless its poisonous fins have been removed. A variant, Heliconlenus dactylopterus, is found in North American waters but fishermen ususally toss it back.
   
   
3. For a true bouillabaisse you need a base broth made from at least a hundred tiny Mediterranean rockfish and clam juice simply won’t do.
   
   
4. Finally, no matter what you do there will be some silly snob who will say “This is a rather nice fish soup, my dear — but, of course, NOT a true bouilabaisse.”

Thackeray on Curry

William Makepeace Thackeray, whose grandfather (of identical name) earned all of his fortune in India (in the elephant trade), was so enamored by "curry" that a wrote a "Poem to Curry" in the literary (and satirical) magazine "Punch".

Incidentally, the recipe is "accurate" inasmuch as it depicts the stereotypical view of "curry" that was marketed to the British in the 18th and 19th century.

Yep, "curry" in England was a product of marketing! (and predictably, around the time of Queen Victoria becoming "Empress of India", the British went nuts about all things Indian.)

Once you understand this, the concept of Jubilee Chicken and Coronation Chicken will no longer seem that mysterious.

Three pounds of veal my darling girl prepares,
And chops it nicely into little squares;
Five onions next prures the little minx
(The biggest are the best, her Samiwel thinks),
And Epping butter nearly half a pound,
And stews them in a pan until they’re brown’d.
What’s next my dexterous little girl will do?
She pops the meat into the savoury stew,
With curry-powder table-spoonfuls three,
And milk a pint (the richest that may be),
And, when the dish has stewed for half an hour,
A lemon’s ready juice she’ll o’er it pour.
Then, bless her! Then she gives the luscious pot
A very gentle boil - and serves quite hot.
PS - Beef, mutton, rabbit, if you wish,
Lobsters, or prawns, or any kind fish,
Are fit to make a CURRY. ‘Tis, when done,
A dish for Emperors to feed upon.

A True Scholar

Ever wondered what Indians ate before New World food arrived? Ever wonder how it arrived? (answer: two completely distinct routes.)

All of this is based on the scholarly work of K. T. Achaya: "Indian Food : A Historical Companion" (published by Oxford India.)

The book is obsessively researched, and requires a substantial knowledge of linguistics, history (both culinary and otherwise,) and food. There are twenty pages of two-column 8-point references, and an index which requires the full knowledge of Indo-European (and then some!)

It's far from dry; it's funny, witty, engaging, in short, thoroughly entertaining. However, it's a very taxing read. the CC could barely read more than ten pages a day (and the book is 250+ pages.) The CC literally has tens of pages of detailed notes on ideas/references to chase down.

Even the very few facts that are wrong are due to the fact that the research was done after the author died. This is a staggeringly brilliant piece of research. (It clearly is the magnum opus of a lifetime of work.)

(Incidentally, he published a separate book called, "A Historical
Dictionary of Indian Food" just to guide people trying to read this
book.)

The book is completely out of control -- it has in-depth discussion of 16th century Gujarati dishes (what is the formal distinction between naashto and farsan?), documented evidence of what is claimed to be the Buddha's last dinner (and what it really consisted of,) what food terms made their way into Sanskrit from older Munda languages (answer: most of them,) and what chandala really means (answer: dog-eater.)

Anyone who's interested in Indian food simply must read this book!