A Really Big Lunch: Meditations on Food and Life From the Roving Gourmand
Page 8
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The great authors and great cooks
who have inspired us in the realization of this menu
Le Maréchal de Richelieu
Nicolas de Bonnefons
Pierre de Lune
Massialot
La Varenne (Le Cuisinier Français)
Marin (Dons de Comus)
Grimod de la Reynière (Almanach des Gourmands)
Brillat-Savarin (Physiologie du Goût)
Mercier (Tableau de Paris)
La Chapelle (La Cuisine Moderne)
Menon
Carême
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The Principal Works
1654Les Délices de la Campagne Bonnefons
1674L’art de Bien Traiter Le Sieur Robert
1662Le Nouveau et Parfait Maître d’Hotel Pierre de Lune, écuyer de cuisine du duc de Rohan
1663
1691L’école Parfaite des Officiers de Bouche Anonyme
1691Le Cuisinier Royal et Bourgeois Massialot
1651Le Cuisinier Français La Varenne, écuyer du Marquis d’Uxelles
1733Le Cuisinier Moderne Vincent La Chapelle (Major work)
1782Tableau de Paris Louis-Sébastien Mercier
1739Dons de Comus ou les Delices de la Table François Marin
1742Nouveau Traité de la Cuisine Menon
1745La Cuisinière Bourgeoise Menon
1755Les Soupers de la Cour Menon
1740Le Cuisinier Gascon Louis Auguste de Bourbon, Prince de Dombes
1808Manuel des Amphitryons Grimod de la Reynière
1823La Physiologie du Goût Brillat-Savarin
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Marc Meneau and Françoise Meneau
Vincent David et Pierre Rouvier, Christophe Baillon, Julien Viollet, Laure Trèche, Stephane Barre, Régis Baillot, Jean-Baptiste Marin, Virginie Rota, Estelle Bachelet, Jonathan Ganirenq, David Sarrazin, Delphine Paoli, Jeremy Barnard, Thomas Grino, Martial Facchinetti, Vanessa Lagano, Damien B., Tristan Ringenbach, Pierre Voisine, Cécile Annet, Ryoji Usukie, Emeric Chambon, Adeline Bouvier, Bruno Leroux, Jean-Charles Boulmier, Brahim Kanouté, Christophe Chalon, Ludivine Maes, Stephane Romeu, Katia Chevalier, Ludovic Piganiol, Noémie Alves, Brice Bechard, Jean Claude Royer, Marie-Lyne Boivin, Evelyne Michel
Gheorghe Varga, Jacqueline Mestre
have put all of their passion into preparing this meal for you.
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A Cook:
This is a man capable of inventing that
which you’ve never eaten anywhere else.
Not any man can be all together at once
Great at the oven
Great on the stove
And great at the spit.
Grimod de la Reynière
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1st Service
Oils
(Nicolas de Bonnefons)
Clear soup of poultry
(rice–diced vegetables–crayfish)
(Marc Meneau)
Sauté of leeks and potatoes
(tartines of foie gras–truffles–lard)
Soups
(La Chapelle)
Velvety cream of squab with cucumbers
(cucumbers–cock crest fritters)
(Menon)
Crayfish bisque in feuilletage
In Les Delices de la Campagne, the Soup of Health is a conventional affair well supplemented with decent meat and reduced with a little broth. One made of cabbage would provide the essence of cabbage.
Nicolas de Bonnefons
Hors d’Oeuvres
(Menon)
Oysters on Camembert toast
(only the cream of Camembert is considered)
(Marin)
Chilled jellied loaf of poultry on sorrel cream
(chicken meat and livers poached in clear broth)
(Massialot)
Fresh Baltic herring with mayonnaise
(potatoes dressed in mayonnaise and
marinated fillets of fresh herring)
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(Marin)
Tarte of calf’s brains with shelled peas
(morsels of brain breaded with parsley
and sautéed)
Louis XV’s omelet with sea urchin
(Louis XV very much loved to cook and
would make certain dishes of his own,
this omelet amongst them.)
(Marin)
Fillets of sole. Champagne sauce
(accompanied by monkfish livers)
Pike spiked with parsley and oven-roasted
In the last century considerable amounts of meat were served in pyramids. Small plates which cost ten times as much as a large one were not yet known. You couldn’t eat delicately for another half century.
Mercier, Tableau de Paris, 1786
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2nd Service
(La Chapelle)
Brill served warm in a fennel stock
(oven-glazed brill–fennel cream with
anchovies–roasted currants)
Stew of suckling pig
(slow-cooked in red wine, thickened
with its blood–onions–bacon)
Warm terrine of hare with preserved plums
(served in its own cooking juices)
Poached eel
(with chicken wing tips, testicles,
tarragon butter)
Glazed partridge breasts
Savory of eggs poached with Chimay ale
Thin layers (mille-feuille) of puff pastry
sandwiched with sardines and leeks
The guy who works in the “new” style
Is preferable to the one who is completely out-of-date.
Menon
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Between the second and third services,
a moment of rest in the salon,
where you may languish and sample your choice
of raviolis with carrots and cumin,
of thick slices of Noirs eggs,
of puff pastry with squab hearts.
A magnificent cider will refresh your palates
and disperse the first “fog.”
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3rd Service
(Massialot)
Casserole of round slices of veal in the manner of Maxarine
(light stew of veal breast and cooked puree of
ham with oysters covered in the casserole
with pastry decorated as bay leaves)
Gratin of beef cheeks thinly sliced
(La Varenne)
Gray squab roasted with strands of parsley
(boned, stuffed with sweetbreads, squab
liver–scallions–wrapped with sprigs
of parsley, spit-roasted)
(Prince des Dombes)
Wild duck with black olives and
orange zest
Bush of crayfish and little slabs of
grilled goose liver
Terrine of the tips of calf’s ear
(Prince des Dombes)
Hare “in a bag” (en Musette)
and Port wine
(hare cooked in a calf’s bladder with Port)
Crispy breaded asparagus
(asparagus partly dipped in batter
and fried–sauce)
Light sponge cake with fruit preserve
Cucumber stewed in wine
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Cordon Bleu: Term destined in culinary literature reserved for a simplified cuisine, placed within reach of all by the labors of the mother or father of the family. The Cordon Bleu was the insignia of the Knights of the Sacred Spirit. By what “miracle” does this word slip toward very skilled male and female cooks?
J. F. Revel
It is the moment of transition
from the salty to the s
weet,
or from cooks to the pastry chef.
Swirl of turnip preserved in sweetened wine
radish preserved in vinegar
Warm salad with almonds
Cream of grilled pistachios
Stuffed cakes–Meringues–Macaroons–Chocolate “cigarettes”
Nothing arouses me but Taste.
Prince des Dombes
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4th Service
Rosette of almond milk with almonds
Soft cheese of fresh cream with quince jelly
Rice whipped with sweetened egg whites and lemon peel
Ring-shaped cake (Savarin) flamed with rum
and served with preserved pineapple
Little molds of ice cream
Towering structure of every fruit imaginable in every manner imaginable
Diderot recounted to Sophie Volland
a meal he had made in the countryside
at the house of the fabulously wealthy Baron of Holbach.
“After lunch,” he said, “one takes a little walk
or one digests, if it’s even possible.”
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Champagne Krug Grande Cuvée in Magnum
Pouilly Fumé 1999 Pur Sang (Didier Dagueneau)
Chablis Les Close 1999 in Magnum (Jean Marie Raveneau)
Montrachet 1989 (Château de Beaune)
Morgon 2001 (Marcel Lapierre)
Volnay Champans 1969 (Hubert de Montille)
Cider l’Argelette 1997 (Eric Bordelet)
Musigny 1990 in Magnum (Jacques Priour)
Château Latour 1989 in Magnum
Côte-Rotie 2000 (Jamet)
Wattwiller 2003 in half bottle
Vin de Constance 1998
Condrieu 2002 Les Ayguets (Yves Cuilleron)
Tokajis Aszu 6 Puttonyos 1983 (Château de Sárospatak)
TONGUE
At one time I was a champ but now I’m wondering if I’ve become a chump? Or only a chimp with car keys? By the age of thirty, I had climbed all of the major mountain peaks of the Midwest. One of them, in particular, near Kingsley, Michigan, intrigued me and challenged me. Known locally only as “the Big Hill,” it was a very big hill indeed. There were no trails, no available mapped routes, and there was the sensation of climbing an enormous virgin, perhaps like the tiniest of ants might feel climbing the leg of a Sapphic giantess after she had bathed in a forest spring. I was also burdened by an onion sack of morels because it was mid-May in the Great North. On my descent, while sobbing with exhaustion and cold, I was met by a dense fog of mosquitoes but luckily caught a brown trout of about three pounds on the Manistee. I roasted the trout and sautéed the morels with wild leeks for my little family.
To be frank, we were fraught with worry. We lived in a shabby house rented for thirty-five bucks a month. It was a questionable deal because many nights in the winter the temperature couldn’t be raised to fifty and my little daughter wore her snowsuit to bed. My abs (abdominal muscles) rippled from manual labor at two dollars an hour. My head was swollen with the pride of having published my first book of poems with W. W. Norton. I refused to teach, thinking it unworthy of a Thief of Fire. In short, I was the same sort of flaming asshole that most young poets are with the inevitability of winter ice on Hudson Bay. At the time, a visiting rich friend said, ‘‘This is so Dickensian.”
Soon enough, however, my career wildly burgeoned with readings throughout our great nation for the National Endowment for the Arts for a hundred dollars a performance. The experience was so absolutely gruesome that over thirty-five years later, I claw at my face when thinking about it. In Detroit, I lost my plane tickets in a strip club. In Minneapolis, it was thirty below in January and I fell down a snowy bank of the Mississippi River. If it hadn’t been for a solid lid of ice, I would have perished. On an Indian reservation in Arizona, a huge girl lunged at me with her pet rattlesnake. She was thrilled to frighten me.
Oddly, this kind of thing is still happening, though at a slightly higher fee. When we jump ahead from then to now through the vast shitstorm clouds of public appearances, however, I feel obliged to help others. Along with murder and thieving it is the Christian thing to do. It’s always improper to whine, or so my mother said, but then she mostly traveled to the rural mailbox and the grocery store. How can I help other poets? Easy. By advising them to get a job and not to do readings. I remember the day in my mid-thirties when I received a letter announcing I had been chosen for the “Texas Tour,” which was nineteen readings in thirty days. While composing a “no” letter, I wondered idly what such activities had to do with the writing of poetry. There are many who think that all of the social activities surrounding literature are part of literature. They aren’t. Nothing matters but the work itself.
How did I liberate myself from this squalid world: the garrulity that is a central manifestation of mediocrities; the bus, train, and plane travel; the colleges that were green lumps of ivy on suburban hills; the ten thousand professors who, like realtors and editors, tell you that they don’t have time to read?
I did so by becoming, briefly, a chef in a women’s prison, and then an international white trash sports fop, and then the lowliest of functionaries in Hollywood, the “writer”—a word that is uttered with sardonic amusement out there, raising images of a nerd who drives an old Honda.
Cooking at a women’s prison—really a low-security home for wayward girls, though a number of prisoners were murderers—was hard work but not unpleasant. Before I began, my heart soared because I’ve always enjoyed cooking for crowds. Even as a child, I’d make hundreds of mud pies for friends. Unfortunately, state institutions had rigid guidelines for prisoner food, including heavy use of government surplus. I’ve never been one to be intimidated by government regulations, with the exception of several raids by the IRS on my person. The problem at the women’s prison was that the menus were preset by the state and there was no budget whatsoever for fresh garlic and red wine. Perhaps the prohibition against red wine is understandable for criminals, but then they always seem to be gobbling drugs with impunity and the availability of red wine would be a health measure. (Drug use in state and federal prisons runs consistently over 80 percent and it’s puzzling how governments expect to control drug use in the free world when they can’t do so in their prisons.)
Sad to say, my chef job lasted a scant month. My staff was a mélange of ethnic and racial backgrounds and uniformly ungifted as sous chefs. Sample dialogue:
“Girls, we need to peel two bushels of russet potatoes,” I’d say.
“Eat shit, white boy,” said Vera, a large black heroin dealer from the Cass Corridor of Detroit.
“Chinga su madre,” said Rosa, a heroin mule from Sonora.
And so it went.
I had to buy fresh garlic and herbs out of my own pocket until one day a half dozen of these monster vixens wrestled me into submission on a pile of dirty laundry. Big rumps broke my nose and loosened two teeth. When I cried out and we were discovered by a guard, I was judged the guilty party and fired. I do remember fondly certain of the malcontents—Carrie, Judy, Mara, Evelyn, Meredith—our late-night Crisco fights over the tubs of tuna with Judy sitting happily in the big bowl of mayo. Amid the squalor of newspapers, television news, bad jobs, bad government, it was exhilarating that there is a durable spiritual aspect of food and sex, that even in a prison kitchen, tuna and tarts can be a form of prayer.
I’ll hastily move through my career as an international white trash sports fop and a Hollywood shill. In the former, I was self-indulgent in Africa, Russia, and Central and South America in a single year. I caught fish and shot game birds and wrote about it, a somewhat limited genre. In Hollywood, I wrote brilliant screenplays that were turned into mediocre movies. I quit in disgust seven years ago and gave myself over totally to literature. Since quitting, I have done f
ourteen book tours in the United States and France, which are every bit as nasty as Hollywood pig poop. Publishing and Hollywood are busy cloning each other and contain the same mushy innards one discovers when cleaning squid. Naturally I love good books and good movies but they are as rare as honest Republicans.
Many people ask me, “Jim, how do you survive the mudbath you’ve organized as a life?” The answer is easy. Food and wine. Just this moment, in Grand Marais, Michigan, on the eve of a book tour to France, where I’ll be winning certain prizes that, like those I’ve won in America, I’ve never heard of, I’ve opened a Sangre de Toro, an ordinary Spanish red, with its secret ingredient, the blood of a bull. Of course bulls are rather unreliable as role models so I should have opened a Vacqueyras Sang des Cailloux (the blood of the rock), but this wine is unavailable in the Upper Peninsula. When the blood is thin, drink blood. Even faux blood will suffice. Our strength comes from metaphor not reality.
This key to vigorous survival was found in a mere ten minutes of reading in Chinese medicine. I admit that this scarcely represents mastery of the subject but who cares? The world is full of nitwit authorities. Chew a leaf a few minutes and you know the tree. Everyone should understand that the hardest thing is still melody which presumes harmony. The dimensions and the nature of the universe make all human pretensions and inventions not much more than silly. The DNA of a flea is more intricate than Mozart, though admittedly, I’d rather listen to Mozart than a dead flea.
Life must go on after my failed attempt to become an Olympic synchronized swimmer, and after that, to write an opera based on women’s TV exercise programs. The women frequently die after wrapping themselves into these Rube Goldberg machines, all to make themselves attractive to louts.
On a recent book tour that covered nineteen cities in thirty-five days, I used the Chinese one-on-one concept and it saved my heart and brain from exploding. When my stomach was sore I ate tripe in the form of menudo at Mexican restaurants. When my mouth was tired from babbling I ate Jewish corned tongue and guanciale, Italian treated pork cheeks. For sore feet it was pig hocks, and tired legs demanded beef shanks and lamb legs. When my gizzard was on the fritz I was lucky enough to find confit de gésiers at Vincent’s in Minneapolis. In the same city toward the end of my tour I acquired a Russian peasant heartiness by eating borscht and Russian sausage and drinking Russian wheat beer at Kramarczuk’s. My fatigued tendons recuperated by eating stewed tendons at the Family Noodle Shop in New York City. In Seattle, Armandino Batali cooked me a giant beef tail for general strength, and in New York City, his son Mario and I tested forty dishes at his restaurants to cover all the possibly neglected basics. One giant lacuna in America is finding a restaurant that serves both brains and testicles, though both are frequently served in Montana in the vicinity of my home.