From Wilder Shores

From Wilder Shores gets its title from Lesley Blanch's first and most famous book, The Wilder Shores of Love. It is a cookbook and more as Blanch sets out in her foreword:

"My book is not a cookery book in the classical sense, and no more than glancingly autobiographical. Nor is it strictly a travel book, although it does tell something of far lands and the circumstances which have led me to eat local dishes in a variety of local settings, from Rothschild dinner tables to Turcoman tents.
Perhaps it could be best described as a sketch book: sketches offering the dishes, places and people I have encountered while on the move through life. "

When she lived in the village of Roquebrune in France she noted there was only one shop in the village which, she noted, "makes housekeeping difficult -- or perhaps very simple."

Here is her simple recipe for an apéritif:

Ida's Bitter Orange Apéritif

To one bottle of red or white wine (good), add the thin shredded rind of three bitter oranges, about half a pound of sugar, a large wine glass if alcohol* and some chamomile flowers. leave for thirty days, but shake once a day, violently. Sieve, before rebottling. That's all.

* When pure alcohol is unobtainable you might substitute vodka.

I am also very fond of Lesley Blanch. Head over to Lucindaville for our more informative post on Blanch's life.

Round The World In 80 Dishes

In 1955 Lesley Blanch wrote a cookbook borrowing a theme from Jules Verne. Having traveled the world with her husband, Romain Gary, a French diplomat and author, she knew a thing or two about eating around the globe.

"It is said that a nation is made by what it eats: undoubtedly diet affects character," Blanch wrote in her foreword to Round the World in 80 Dishes.

Here is her recipe for a chicken from Africa.

Congo Chicken

1 3 pound chicken [one 3 pound chicken]
1/4 pound butter
Salt
6 green peppers
Oil
Peanut butter
1 cup roasted peanuts, unsalted

Take a 3-pound chicken, cleaned and prepared for roasting: now pack the inside with 1/4 pound butter and a handful of peanuts. Rub the chicken all over with salt and dabs of butter. Put in a medium oven and roast. The length of time depends on its weight: reckon 20 minutes to the pound. Thus a 3-pound chicken needs just about 1 hour. Baste it occasionally.

Meanwhile, take 6 green peppers and cook them whole, very fast, for 10 minutes, in a frying pan with very little oil. Let them get a bit burned, or blackened, outside. Take them off the fire, allow them to cool slightly, cut off the tops, scoop out the centres, cut the rest in strips, and put in the oven around the chicken, spooning a little of the butter the chicken in cooking in over them. Baste again when the chicken is half done. When your chicken is tender (prod the leg with a fork to see), take it out of the oven and spread it all over thinly with peanut butter. Salt it. Now take a cupful of chopped or coarsely ground roasted peanuts and sprinkle them all over your chicken. They will stick to the peanut butter and form a prickly-looking nutty coating. Put back into the oven and cook for another 5 or 6 minutes. Then serve surrounded by the green peppers. Eat plain rice with this, into which at the last moment you have sprinkled finely-chopped fresh green parsley.

As a rule, I am not fond of nuts in my food, but I have grown very fond of peanut butter as a cooking sauce for chicken.

I am also very fond of Lesley Blanch. Head over to Lucindaville for our more informative post on Blanch's life.