Ten Vineyard Lunch

The raison d’être of the table, after all, is to have a good time.
Richard Olney

Richard Olney was one of the best food writers in America. He was the chief consultant to the Time-Life Good Cook series, which Andrew Knowlton of shaggy hair fame said was the best 28 volume "cookbook" ever. The French Menu Cookbook is one of the classic cookbooks of all time.

Ten Vineyard Lunches is organized as menus from ten areas of France with burgeoning vineyards. Richard Olney always has great foods, but what makes this book truly special is the way he speaks about entertaining.

Here are some of Olney’s observations.

“If everyone, guest and host alike, is not relaxed and happy, the meal is a failure, no matter how perfect the food and the wine.”

“There is nothing formal about my table – unless an array of wine glasses be considered formal –and, because I am most comfortable dressed in rags, that is the way I receive.”

“I don’t much worry about timing – as long as the Champagne glasses are kept filled no one minds lingering before going to the table.”

As someone who dresses in rags and adores a good Krug, I would have to say we would have been soul mates.
This recipe is from a menu for dining in the Loire Valley and it uses my favorite -- pears.

Baked Pears

4 firm eating pears
unsalted butter
2-3 tbsp sugar, or to taste
about 1/3 cup heavy cream

halve the pears, remove the cores, peel and slice lengthwise. Preheat the oven to 400º. Butter a shallow gratin dish and spread the pear slices, over lapping fanwise, over the surface. Sprinkle with sugar, dab over cream and bake for 12 to 15 minutes, or until the cream is bubbling and the surface lightly colored.

This couldn't be simpler, yet positively elegant -- the Richard Olney way.

Larousse Treasury of Country Cooking

I love this book just for the cover photo. I want all that stuff sitting on a shelf and looking exactly like that. This book is a kind of oversized companion to Great Peasant Dishes of the World. There are hundreds of recipes that are the backbone of the cuisines of countries around the world. When I came across this recipe, I immediately went out and bought some pork.

Pork Stewed in Cumin

Marinade:

1/2 cup white wine
juice of one lemon
1 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground pepper


2 pounds lean boneless pork, cubed
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 bunch cilantro, chopped
Lemon wedges for garnish
Olives for garnish

1. In a shallow non-metallic bowl, combine the marinade ingredients.
2. Add the pork cubes and stir to coat thoroughly. Cover and refrigerate for 24 hours, turning meat occasionally.
3. Remove marinated pork from a bowl with a slotted spoon. Pat dry. Reserve marinade.
4. Heat the oil in a heavy casserole, add the meat and sauté over moderately high heat until golden brown. Add the marinade. Reduce heat to low, cover and cook until the meat is tender, about 45 minutes. Lower the heat, stir in the cilantro. Mix well and transfer to heated serving platter.
5. Garnish with lemon wedges and olives. Serve with fried potatoes.

The Art of Cuisine

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec was an artist…in the kitchen as well as in print.



Toulouse-Lautrec was a party animal who loved food, drink and fast women. The poet Paul Leclercq said of his friend:

“He was a great gourmand. He always carried a little grater and a nutmeg to flavor the glasses of port he drank. He loved to talk about cooking and knew of many rare recipes for making the most standard dishes, for in this, as in all else, Lautrec had a hatred of useless frills. And like a good Southerner, the more he valued straightforward cooking, the more he despised the doubtful and pretentious chemistry of restaurants and palace hotels.”

Who knew Henri Toulouse-Lautrec was a Southerner! Perhaps it is the "South" of France, but Southerner still. It was another friend, Maurice Joyant, who is responsible for collecting the recipes that Toulouse-Lautrec invented and gathered from friends and acquaintances. His most valuable contribution to the culinary realm may be his "invention" of the cocktail nosh, for it is Toulouse-Lautrec who is often given credit for originating the fashion of cocktail food.



I don’t know if this would be a good amuse-bouche to have with a lovely chardonnay, but give it try next September.

Stewed Marmots

Having killed some marmots sunning themselves belly up in the sun with their noses in the air one sunrise in September, skin them and carefully put aside the mass of fat which is excellent for rubbing into the bellies of pregnant women, into the knees, ankles, and painful joints of sprains, and into the leather of shoes.
Cut up the marmot and treat it like stewed hare which has a perfume that is unique and wild.

Clearly, this why we like the French. In America we might be tempted to call these little guys groundhogs. How positively unappealing! But "Marmot" it sounds so lovely, even thought the translation from the Old French probably means "mountain mouse." Still mountain mouse verses ground hog -- tough call.

Lest you be running around this sunny September sunrise without a clue -- behold the sunning marmot.

The Potato Book

The Hampton Day School in Bridgehampton, New York decided to produce a book as a fund-raiser. Not a terribly unusual thing to do. Bridgehampton was once covered in potato fields, so the idea was to do a potato cookbook filled with recipes and fun potato facts and Myrna David stepped up. The Potato Book was born.

For any other community, such a fundraiser might go unnoticed, but Bridgehampton is a hotbed of writers, artists, restaurants and even Craig Claiborne. And while he didn’t have any children in the Hampton Day School, Truman Capote wrote the introduction. With all this talent, the book was snapped up by a publisher, primarily for the introduction. Capote wrote:

“I live in Sagaponack by the sea. The house, which I love, sits smack in the middle of potato fields. In Fall, when the harvesting is done and the tractors are gone from the fields, I amble out through the empty rows collecting small, sweet, leftover potatoes for my larder.

Imagine a cold October morning, I fill my basket with found potatoes in the field and race to the kitchen to create my one and only most delicious ever potato lunch. The Russian vodka—it must be 80 proof – goes into the icebox to chill. The potatoes into the oven to bake. My breathless friend arrives to share the feast. Out comes the icy vodka. Out comes a bowl of sour cream. Likewise the potatoes, piping hot.

We sit down to sip our drinks. We split open steaming potatoes and put on some sour cream. Now I whisk out the big tin of caviar, which I have forgotten to tell you is the only way I can bear to eat a potato."

Well this is hardly a rousing endorsement of the potato, but then Capote grew up in Alabama so I just love hear him (and when I read this I “hear” his unique voice) using words like “larder’ and “icebox” and I am drawn to his writing.

If you are out in the Hamptons for the summer, you may find the need to cook for a large gathering. Here’s what you need.

Quahog Chowder For 100

1 bushel chowder (Quahog) clams, opened and minced
15 pounds dressed-weight striped bass filets, chunked
1 3/4 gallons clam broth, reserved from steaming open clams (plus one quart)
18 medium-sized onions, minced fine and squeezed
2 pounds salt pork, diced
1/2 pound butter
10 pounds potatoes, pared and diced
3 quarts milk
1 cup Almaden white wine
Thyme, one bunch minced
1 cup chopped fresh parsley

Try out pork, add onions and cook until just slightly brown. Add butter if necessary. Add clam broth. Bring to a boil. Add potatoes; cook until tender. Add fish; cook until half or three-quarters done. Add clams, simmer briefly. Add thyme and parsley. Add milk and wine. Simmer all a while.

In keeping with our transcription of recipes from the book they are in, we left “Try” out the pork. I’m sure this is supposed to be “Fry”. As you can tell, this is a fund-raising cookbook, so there was no trained dietitian or even a trained cook to test the recipes. I am not sure how to tell if bass is “three-quarters done.” Nor am I sure how long, “a while” is. But you get the idea.

Mrs. A. B. Marshall’s Larger Cookery Book of Extra Recipes

I have mentioned Mrs. A. B. Marshall several time recently, so I though I would feature her "larger" cookbook.
Her first book was on ices, a rather new phenomenon in the early 1900's. She went on to invent her own ice cream maker. She features heavily in the Queen Cookery Book on Ices.

Though not as well known as Mrs. Beeton, Agnes Marshall had a tremendous influence on the English culinary mind.



After her first large book, there was a request for more recipes and the Larger Cookbook came into being. At this point, Mrs. Marshall had begun a cooking school, training many of the cooks that filled English manor houses, including Mrs. Mander's.

Here is one of those lovely dishes one might include in their "cold service" at a large gathering. Notice the vast amounts of bombes one might require for such a dish.

Crayfish (Prawns) à la Gelée

Fill some little bombe moulds with aspic jelly; let this set, then dip the moulds into warm water, turn out and arrange some large prawns or the prepared crayfish bodies all over the bombes and serve in little square paper cases that are filled with a salad of lettuce; they can be garnished with picked chervil, parsley, or tarragon; serve for hors d’oeuvre or savoury or for any cold service.

Another of Mrs. Marshall's creations was an ice cream shaped like asparagus. To pull off such a dish one needs about 20 asparagus moulds. Today if you could possibly find those old asparagus moulds it would set you back thousands of dollars.



You will simply have to scoop that pistachio ice cream into a bowl and make do!

To see more cool kitchen gadgets check out Ivan Day's site Historic Food.

Annie Bell's Vegetable Book

Annie Bell is one of my favorite cooks. She wrote Living and Eating with architect John Pawson.


Annie Bell's Vegetable Book is one of her harder books to find. It is the kind of book that makes even the most ardent carnivore (like me) want to run out and be a big old vegetarian.

Here is a recipe that Bell got from Sirio Maccioni of Le Cirque. Ironically, she says this is recipe she would not have tried on her own.

Since it is summer, and I love ice cream, I thought you would enjoy this recipe. I am all for making interesting types of ice cream. While I do love chocolate and vanilla, there are just too many possibilities out there. Try our Pimm’s Cup Ice Cream on the Lucindaville Blog. And then try this. Make some Sweet Cornbread Madelines with Thyme to serve as a side.

This ice cream is not made with a custard, so remember to eat it right away – like that would be a problem.

Corn and Vanilla Ice-cream

10 oz raw corn kernels 91 1/2 –2 cobs)
8 fl oz milk
4 1/2 oz caster sugar
12 fl oz double cream
seeds of 1 vanilla pod
2 medium eggs, whisked
1 tablespoon Cointreau

The corn kernels should be freshly stripped from the cob, by holding the cob upright on the chopping board ans cutting down with a large, sharp knife. Place these in a small saucepan with the milk and sugar, bring to the boil, cover and simmer over a low heat for 15 minutes. Puree and pass through a sieve into a bowl.
Whisk the corn puree with the cream, vanilla seeds, eggs, and Cointreau and pass through a sieve. Freeze in your ice-cream maker according to the manufacture’s instructions. Remove to a bowl, cover and freeze.

Nothing says summer like ice cream and sweet corn. Mix them together and it's summer heaven.

Great Peasant Dishes of the World

In the early eighties, Howard Hillman wrote the book Great Peasant Dishes of the World. While some of the dishes may have been peasant dishes at one time, many of them are found in fine dining establishments. There is pesto, choucroute garni, moules marinière, and osso buco to name a few.

When asked to define “peasant,” Hillman says:

“In the context of this book, a peasant is a small-scale farmer, rancher, herder, hunter, or fisherman. Unlike the city dweller, the peasant is close to his food source.”

Today that would define every restaurateur to open a new bistro.

You can tell how far food has come in the last 30 years when looking at a book like this. For instance, Hillman says that some of the items in this book are now becoming staples like – carrots. Of course, now days one can find carrots at the 7-11.

Many of the mail-order products suggested in the book can now be found in any supermarket. This recipe for I’a Ota gives a mail order address for coconut cream, which I can find in my tiny local market.

I’t Ota

1/2 pound tuna steak
1/2 pound tilefish or sea bass
1/2 cup lime juice
1/2 cup sliced scallions
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup diced firm tomatoes
1/4 cup coconut cream

1. skin and bone the fish and slice them into rectangular segments measuring approximately 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch by 1 1/2 inches.
2. Place the fish, lime juice, scallions, and salt in a glass or other noncossosible bowl. Mix the ingredients well but gently. Cover, and refrigerate the preparation for 3 hours.
3. Drain off the excess liquid from the bowl and add the tomatoes and coconut cream. Gently but thoroughly toss the ingredients. Serve the I’a ota immediately in chilled glass or porcelain bowls.

Now get out there and hunt for those carrots.

A Tale of 12 Kitchens

Jake Tilson was raised in a kind of arty/hippy household. His family loved to cook and he has made cooking and gastronomy his art. A Tale of 12 Kitchens is a visual, graphic explosion of recipes, stories, travel, art, and culinary history. A Tale of 12 Kitchens: Family Cooking in Four Countries is a diary of all things food.


Tilson loves cooking in big kitchens, small kitchens, over open fires and even in hotel bathrooms. He loves gadgets, finding unusual ones, making his own, and buying them used. He loves spices and chilies and even the way food is packages.


In his expansive endnotes he informs us:

“Every kitchenware buyer should have a potter with them who will happily insist on looking through a pile of forty Catalonian earthenware dishes for just the right one.”

I know the feeling!

Squash with Yellow Tomatoes

1 small white onion
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 yellow tomatoes, sliced
1 guero chile (or banana pepper), finely chopped
3 long thin yellow squash, sliced into rounds
Salt

In a large frying pan, sauté onion in oil until translucent. Add the tomatoes and cook until soft. Add the chile, squash, and a little salt. Cover. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

Please, by all means, volunteer to help your foodie friend search for just the right pot.

Caviar and Corned Beef for the Live- Aloner

In 1936 Marjorie Hillis wrote the ever amusing Live Alone and Like It (re-issued in 2008). She wrote, “There may still be those in Alabama who look upon an unmarried state as an affliction, but in New York it is at most a very minor ailment.” Wow, it could be 2006.

The next year, having identified all those "extra girls" it was only natural that she offer some practical cooking advice. Alas, living alone means having to cook for just yourself and you know how a girl hates that. Of course, for many "Live-Aloners" in 1937, there was a maid to help with that pesky cooking. Caviar and Corned Beef for the Live- Aloner shows you what to do (or what your maid should do). If you are without a maid, here’s a menu you CAN do -- from soup to dessert it comes from cans!

Chicken gumbo soup
Triscuit Wafers
Baked Beans in Casserole
Vegetable Salad
Grapefruit

Your baked beans will stay warm in the oven while you eat your soup and Triscuits. Then your lovely baked beans with a bit of bacon on top. Followed by your vegetables salad. Make your salad of cut-up tomato with asparagus, lettuce and leftover vegetables mixed with mayo. And of course, finally, your canned grapefruit.

While you may be a "Live-Aloner", there is still hope, even Hillis traded her "Live-Aloner" status for a "Mrs." at the ripe old age of 49! Clearly she followed her own advice -- “there is something very flattering to any man about an initiation to dine à deux with a lady.”




If you are planning dinner à deux, follow these simple rules and you too, may just grab a hubby. (My notes)

Don’t invite him unless you can give him a meal he will enjoy. (Don’t serve the CAN menu.)

Never ask a man to balance his plate on his knees. (They are so clumsy!)

Do not judge a man’s appetite by his size. (Fat men are often on a diet.)

Don’t serve your guest his native dish. (No gumbo if he’s from New Orleans.)

Here is a recipe for grabbing that man.

Scalloped Sweet Potatoes

The scalloped sweet potatoes (which are not for reducers) are made by first putting a cupful of boiled sweet potatoes cut into quarter-inch slices in a buttered baking dish with three-quarters of a cupful of thinly-sliced apples. A quarter of a cupful of brown sugar is sprinkled over them, then two tablespoonfuls of butter are dotted here and there and a half teaspoonful of slat tossed into the mélange. The process is then repeated, with the same amount of potatoes, apples and what-have-you forming a second layer, and the whole thing should be baked for an hour in a moderate oven.

All right, you "Live-Aloners", run into that kitchen and start cooking.

Lenôtre Desserts and Pastries

Earlier this year Gaston Lenôtre died. He trained many chefs including one of our favorites, Michel Richard, who said of his mentor, “When you’ve been at Lenôtre, it’s like a drug. You’ve been injected with his recipes that you have to carry your whole life.”

In 1932, at age 12, Gaston Lenôtre made his first dessert. To use the old cliché, the rest is history….

The next four years, he apprenticed in his native Normandy. At 16, Lenôtre went to Paris and spent another 4 years honing his trade. He returned to Normandy and in 1957 he moved his family to Paris, opening one shop after another.

Books written by pastry chefs are often tedious affairs. The instructions bog down for even the most advanced cook. While many of Lenôtre’s recipes are for classic desserts, many of them quite advanced, he gives the cook enough information and instruction to pull them off. In fact, he gave the recipes to his daughter and asked her to try cooking them from his recipes. She seemed to get through.

I chose a simple cake recipe for you to try. It is Uncle Tom’s cake. I am pretty sure it is Lenôtre’s Uncle Tom and not Harriet Beecher Stowe’s.

Uncle Tom’s Cake

For two cakes:

3 1/2 ounces semi-sweet chocolate
5 eggs, separated
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3 1/2 tablespoons butter, melted
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 1/2 tablespoons granulated sugar

for the decoration

Confectioners’ sugar


Preheat oven to 400 F

Butter the pans and place a paper disk at the bottom of each one. Dust the sides of the pans with flour so the cakes will turn out easily.
Melt the chocolate in a double boiler.
Beat the egg yolks with the sugar until the mixture forms a pale ribbon; then, still beating, add the melted butter. Beat the egg whites until very stiff, adding 1 1/2 tablespoons granulated sugar halfway through.
Pour the yolk-sugar mixture over the warm chocolate, stirring vigorously. Then gently fold the flour and cornstarch into the chocolate. Using the spatula, fold the chocolate mixture into the egg whites, working quickly but carefully. The batter must be baked immediately.

Pour the batter into the pans; they should be no more than 3/4 full. Bake at 400 F oven for 1 minute, then lower the heat to 350 F and bake for 50 minutes more, keeping the door ajar with a spoon.
Remove the cake from the oven and allow to cool. While still warm, turn out and place the paper doilies on top of them. Sprinkle the cakes with confectioners’ sugar, then remove the doilies and serve.

I like a recipe that makes 2 cakes, that way you can give one to your Uncle Tom and keep one for yourself.