Grasshoppers Grilled in the Fashion of Saint John the Baptist

It is not very well known that the artist Henri Toulouse-Lautrec was a terrific cook. We have descriptions of his endlessly inventive cooking and drink recipes during the belle epoque.

He clearly thought that food and art were collinear. He is once said to have ended a meal by unveiling a masterpiece of Degas, "Gentlemen, here's your dessert."

Just the name of the recipe is so suggestive.

As everyone knows St. John the Baptist was beheaded at the request of Salomé in Herod's court. The Biblical themes of locusts and beheadings resonate as does the exquisite detail to color (yellow, pink, red) characteristic of Toulouse-Lautrec's work.

From a large swarm of grasshoppers, choose the most beautiful, the pink rather than the brown or the yellow.

Put them on a screen and let them grill lightly over a charcoal fire while at the same time sprinking them with a few pinches of coarse salt.

Tear off the the head by turning them so that they whole digestive tract will come out intact.

Lay the grasshoppers on a dish garnished with rounds of lemon; season to taste with salt and ordinary red pepper.

Shell and eat the desert grasshoppers (locusts) in the same way as "grasshoppers" of the English Channel, that is to say shrimps, which have the same savor.

The Dark Side of Pastoral

The genre of food writing both memoir and cookbook are the last gasp of the Pastoral.

The pastoral is the genre of art, literature or music which depicts rural life as lived in harmony with nature preferably according to the seasons. It's heyday was in the Romantic era late into the Industrial Revolution. The revolution had created a massive upheaval and migration from rural to urban centers. It also created massive wealth through increased productivity.

It was possible then for an urban aesthete to romanticize the myth of the unsoiled countryside clashing violently with the notably apparent grime of urbanity and thus mythologize the past.

If you find yourself thinking that this resembles a massive number of books in recent time about the "joys" of farm life, you would be entirely correct.

There is a book published recently by a woman who married a Japanese farmer, and the book is spectacular, of course, but the CC was a little puzzled that she could afford a modern house with fancy equipment in rural Japan. A teeny-tiny little dig beneath the surface, you find out that she made her money running an English school.

The book is selling a fantasy.

The blunt truth is that there is very little money to be made in farming. The reason is simple. It requires minimal skill. Any farmer in rural Africa or Asia can do the job so there's a ton of supply and only a fixed demand which goes up only slowly as populations rise.

There is an exception naturally. As any good economist would tell you that it consists of having a high demand and only limited supply. In this context, it would mean selling a unique product that nobody else produces.

This explains the rush for obscure heirloom tomatoes, varieties of eggplants, herbs, etc. The CC should also mention the existence of Sembikiya in Japan where "perfect" fruit is sold akin to jewelry (with prices to match!) These are luxury items and can easily sustain a livelihood.

Of course, you could always be a "gentleman farmer" as can be seen in the books of Jane Austen but the wealth has always been obtained from somewhere else. The farm is a consumption item not one of production, and the consumption comes attached with the genuine pleasure in consuming a superior product.

So as Ricardo might have understood it, you might as well out-source the problem, and consume the finest produce, meat and seafood that other people can procure or produce better than you unless you happen to be skilled at its production which case the CC would appreciate an invitation!

Pasta with Butternut Squash, Sage and Pine Nuts

This utterly simple dish is dazzling array of textures and of tastes, and yet is so beguilingly easy that can easily be made at a moment's notice.

Interestingly, as my dinner companion pointed out the dish follows all the aesthetic and culinary rules of Japanese washoku inspite of the fact that the dish is Italian, of course. The rules of go shiki (five colors) and go mi (five tastes) and go ho (five ways = different methods) are effortlessly satisfied.

It's success is precisely that it's visually arresting (Toulouse-Lautrec might be jealous) and texturally and tastewise different with every bite.

Ingredients

1 large red onion
2-3 cloves garlic (chopped into thin segments)
4-5 dried red chillies
1 butternut squash (diced into large-ish cubes)
salt
black pepper
1/4 cup sage (chiffonaded)
1/2 cup pine nuts
olive oil

2 cups pasta
grated parmigiano-reggiano

Recipe

Toast the pine nuts in a skillet. Set aside.

In a pot, heat some olive oil at a medium-low heat. Fry the onion, garlic and red chillies. Do not hurry this process. When the onions are limp but not caramelized, they will rerelease the oil they have absorbed. Add the butternut squash and fry languidly. Add the salt, and liberal amounts of black pepper.

Add some water, and cover and let the squash soften. The mixture should be just slightly on the wet side.

Cook some pasta al dente in heavily-salted water.

When the pasta is done, add the sage to the squash mixture, and toss with the pasta.

Add the parmigiano-reggiano and the toasted pine nuts as toppings.

Slicing Sandwiches

Everyone claims that sandwiches taste the same way whether cut in half or on the diagonal but anyone with taste knows the "truth" - that diagonal-cut ones taste better!

To all that have struggled with this (and you know who you are!) you are not alone.

The CC is with you!

Pasta Shapes

What's the difference you ask?

Well, some of it is just tradition ("would you eat hamburgers on a hot dog bun?") but some it has to do with the difference between the tastes of freshly made pasta (= "contains eggs"), and dried pasta (= "dried durum wheat dough"). Also certain shapes can hold certain sauces better thanks to the crevices or even just the surface texture. Also fresh pastas are traditionally paired with fairly minimalist but richer sauces.

Here's a site with some nice pictures.

The Form of Cookbooks

We have already noted the tendency of cookbook writers to be optimists. They also tend to be deeply romantic with a tendency towards the pastoral.

Their imaginations are filled with villages and farmers living off the land; cows and herdmen; folk foraging for herbs in the wild; a mythical sort of Arcadia harking back to some unstated golden age of food making.

Reality is seldom so kind.

Where they have you visualize the gentle mooing of cows in a grass-spread expanse, is really earth-shattering methane-laden farts for anyone who has actually visited a farm. Where they would have you picking herbs along Mediterranean coasts should be counter-indicated with the brutal and vicious poverty that lines those lands, along with a deep distrust of strange foreigners who invade wanting to talk about food.

Recipes too are not just procedural. They contain obvious and hidden metaphors, as much about tantalizing the reader's sense of space ("Ah, Firenze!"), light ("sunrise over the Adriatic"), time ("once when we were young"), and sense ("wafting aroma from a colorful melange"), as they are about the actual execution ("try it! you know you want to!")

It is this romanticization that partly explains why certain meals tend to linger in our imagination.

Sentiment here freely mixes with nostalgia ("my mother's recipe"), transports us ("eating mangoes with juices dripping"), allows us to live vicariously in both space and time ("the royal chef prepared..."), and allows wild optimism to turn into outright absurdity.

Jane Grigson tried to imagine a neo-pastoral world: "Now we might extend the picture to include high-rise blocks, patched with vegetation on every balcony - Marmande and plum tomatoes in pots, herbs in window-boxes, courgettes and squashes trailing round the doors. Inside, there could be aubergine, pepper, chilli and basil plants on the window sill, jars of sprouting seeds, dishes of mustard and cress, with mushroom buckets and blanching chicory in the dark broom and airing cupboards."

The CC thinks we can safely say, in retrospect, that the problems of inner-cities do not emanate from the lovely odors of freshly growing herbs (a different kind of herb, maybe!)

Escapism also plays a role.

How many can truly afford a life of leisure traipsing along the Mediterranean, stopping for an omelette and a glass of wine here, and sampling onion jam there? And wouldn't it get boring after the first few weeks?

Elizabeth David freely admits this about her books written just after World War II with rationing in effect. The chances that her readers could even obtain a handful of those ingredients was negligible. The books are explicit escapist fantasies in a troubled world (however excellent the recipes might be.)

The seduction of this mythical past where food was unadulterated by chemicals, and presented without sham or pretentiousness is a heady mix, and hardly anyone is immune from the potency of the image.

These books are truly the last gasp of the Romantic movement. They provide a concentrated sense of drama in a short space (a recipe is as brief as a sonnet,) and the allure of heaven.

If only we too had the right ingredients, and the right company in the right setting, then we too could be gambolling around like fox cubs in dappled sunlight.