by Nora Ephron
Mrs. Miller wrote in reply: “I can only suggest to Mr. Field … that he immerse his typewriter immediately in boiling water. There are many types of virulence in the world, and ‘boiling the water first’ is one of the best ways to disinfect anything.”
The feud between Field and Claiborne had been simmering for several years, but Claiborne’s review of the Time-Life cookbook turned it up to full boil. “He has a perfect right to dislike the book,” said Field. “But his attack went far beyond that, into personalities.” A few months after the review was published, Field counterpunched, with an article in McCall’s entitled “New York’s Ten Most Overrated Restaurants.” It is in almost total opposition to Claiborne’s Guide to New York Restaurants; in fact, reading Field’s piece without having Claiborne’s book alongside is a little like reading Finnegans Wake without the key.
For his part, Claiborne would just as soon not discuss Field—“Don’t get me started,” he said. And his attitude toward the Time-Life series has mellowed somewhat: he has finally consented to write the text of the Time-Life Cookbook of Haute Cuisine along with Franey. But some time ago, when asked, he was only too glad to defend his review. “Helen McCully (food editor of House Beautiful) said to me, ‘How could you be so mean to Michael?’ ” he recalled. “I don’t give a good God damn about Michael.” His face turned deep red, his fists clenched, he stood to pace the room. “The misinformation! The inaccuracies in that book! I made a stack of notes thicker than the book itself on the errors in it. It’s shameful.”
Claiborne was so furious about the book, in fact, that he managed to intensify what was, until then, a one-sided feud between James Beard and himself. Beard, a genial, large, round man who receives guests in his Tenth Street house while seated, Buddha-like, on a large pouf, had been carrying on a mild tiff with Claiborne for some time. Just before the first Time-Life cookbook was published, the two men appeared together on the David Susskind Show, and in the course of the program, Beard held up the book and plugged it on the air. Afterward, Claiborne wrote a letter to Susskind, with carbon copy to Beard, saying that if he had known he was going to appear on the same show with the Time-Life cookbook, he never would have consented to go on.
(That Julia Child has managed thus far to remain above the internecine struggles of the food world probably has more to do with the fact that she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, well away from it all, than with her charming personality.)
The success of the Time-Life cookbook series is guaranteed, Claiborne’s review notwithstanding. Offered by mail order to subscribers who care not one whit whether the soufflé on the cover is actually a meringue, the series rapidly signed up five hundred thousand takers—for all eighteen books! (The New York Times Cook Book, itself a blockbuster, has sold only two hundred thousand copies.) “The books, whatever their limits, are of enormous quality,” says Field. “Every recipe works and is honestly conceived.” Yet a number of those intimately connected with the books have complained about the limits Field parenthetically refers to, and most particularly about the technique of group journalism that has produced the books: apparently, the text, recipes, and photographs of some of the cookbooks have been done independently of each other.
“It’s a joke,” said Nika Hazelton, who is writing the text for the Time-Life German Cookbook. “First there is the writer—me, in this case, but I have nothing to do with the recipes or illustrations. Then there is the photographic staff, which takes recipes from old cookbooks, changes them a little, and photographs them. Then there is the kitchen, under Michael Field’s supervision. I think Michael knows about French and Italian food, but he doesn’t know quite as much about other cookery. The cook is John Clancy, a former cook in a short-order house who once worked for Jim Beard. I’m the only person connected with the project who knows languages besides French. There is a consultant who hasn’t been in Germany for thirty years. My researcher’s background is spending three years with the Morgan Bank. It’s hilarious. I’m doing it only for the money.”
The money that is available to members of the Food Establishment is not quite as much as they would have you think, but it is definitely enough to keep every last one of them in truffles. James Beard—who commands the highest fees and, though a purist, has the most ties with industry—recently turned down a hundred-thousand-dollar offer to endorse Aunt Jemima mixes because he didn’t believe in their products. Retainers offered lesser stars are considerably smaller, but there are many jobs, and they suffice. Nevertheless, the impression persists that there are not enough jobs to go around. And because everyone in the food world is freelancing and concerned with putting as many eggs into his basket as possible, it happens that every time someone gets a job, the rest feel that they have lost one.
Which brings us to the case of Myra Waldo. An attractive, chic woman who lives on upper Fifth Avenue, Miss Waldo published her first cookbook in 1954, and since then she has been responsible for forty-two others. Forty-three cookbooks! In addition, she does four radio spots a day for WCBS, is roving editor of Family Circle magazine, is retained by Pan American Airways, and recently landed the late Clementine Paddleford’s job as food editor of This Week magazine. Myra Waldo has never been a favorite in the Food Establishment: she is far too successful. Furthermore, although she once made forty-eight soufflés over a July Fourth weekend, she is not a truly serious cook. (To a visitor who wanted a recipe for a dinner party, she suggested duck in a sauce made of frozen orange juice, Melba sauce, red wine, cognac, lemon juice, and a can of Franco-American beef gravy.) For years it has been rumored that Miss Waldo produces as many cookbooks as she does because she clips recipes and pastes them right onto her manuscript pages, or because she has a gigantic staff—charges she denies. But when she landed the This Week job, one that nearly everyone else in the Food Establishment had applied for, the gang decided that too much was too much. Shortly afterward, she went to the Cookbook Guild party, and no one except James Beard even said hello to her.
Said Beard: “You could barely move around at that party for fear someone would bite you in the back.”
How much longer life in the Food Establishment—with its back-biting, lip-smacking, and pocket-jingling—will go on is hard to tell. There are some who believe the gourmet explosion that began it all is here to stay and that fine cooking is on the increase. “Of course it will last,” said Poppy Cannon, “just in the way sculpture will last. We need it. It is a basic art. We ought to have a National Academy of the Arts to represent the art of cooking.”
Others are less sure. They claim that the food of the future will be quite different: precooked, reconstituted, and frozen dishes with portion control. “The old cuisine is gone for good and dying out,” says Mrs. Hazelton. “Ultimately, cooking will be like an indoor sport, just like making lace and handiwork.”
Whatever happens, the Food Establishment at this moment has the power to change the way America eats. And in fact, about all it is doing is showing how to make a better piecrust and fill a bigger breadbox.
“What fascinates me,” says Mimi Sheraton, “is that the more interest there is in gourmet food, the more terrible food is for sale in the markets. You can’t buy an unwaxed cucumber in this country, the bread thing everyone knows about, we buy overtenderized meat and frozen chicken. You can’t buy a really fresh egg because they’ve all been washed in hot water so the shells will be clean. And the influence of color photography on food! Oil is brushed on to make it glow. When we make a stew, the meat won’t sit on top, so we have to prop it up with oatmeal. Some poor clod makes it at home and it’s like buying a dress a model has posed in with the back pinned closed. As a result, food is marketed and grown for the purpose of appearances. We are really the last generation who even has a vague memory of what food is supposed to taste like.
“There have been three revolutionary changes in the food world in past years,” Miss Sheraton continued. “The pressure groups have succeeded in changing the labeling of foods, they’ve succeeded i
n cutting down the amounts of pesticides used on foods, and they’ve changed the oversized packages used by the cereal and cracker people. To me, it’s interesting that not one of these stories began with a food writer. Where are they, these food writers? They’re off wondering about the boeuf en daube and whether the quiche was authentic.”
Yes, that’s exactly where they are. “Isn’t it all a little too precious?” asks Restaurant Associates president Joseph Baum. “It’s so elegant and recherché, it’s like overbreeding a collie.” But, after all, someone has to worry about the boeuf en daube and whether the quiche was authentic—right? And there is so much more to do. So many soufflés to test and throw out. So many ways of cooking asparagus to discover. So many patés to concoct. And so many things to talk about. Myra’s new book. The record Poppy is making. Why Craig finally signed on to Time-Life Cookbooks. Michael’s latest article. So much more to do. So many things to talk about….
—September 1968
About Having People to Dinner
WHEN I STARTED out cooking, my biggest fear was that nothing would come out at the same time as anything else.
This proved to be a ridiculous fear, but it took me years to realize that you can keep food warm for quite a long time without really harming it in any way. There is an awful lot of mumbo-jumbo in cookbooks that completely terrifies you—cookbook writers always insisting that you must serve something right away and that you can’t possibly reheat things—but with the possible exception of mashed potatoes, most everything you cook can be kept warm for a while without any serious consequences. And even mashed potatoes can sit covered with foil in a 300-degree oven for a while without losing a whole lot. Just make sure you have the oven turned on in advance.
Of course, a thing you can do if this is at all worrisome to you is to plan a dinner where everything isn’t hot. This is one of the things that’s so great about the ham dinner theory—the ham doesn’t have to be hot, and just about everything served with it doesn’t have to be hot.
On the other hand, I almost never serve anything like roast beef or leg of lamb for a large number of people, because there’s no way that the meat won’t be cold by the time you serve everyone. And roast beef is just not as good when it’s cold.
So what am I saying here? I think what I’m saying is that you should try to relax about having people over. I have friends who are nervous hostesses, and it just contaminates the entire mood of the evening. They are always rushing from the room to check things and have a wild look in their eyes when they return from the kitchen.
Another thing I’m saying is, try to make things easy for yourself. Don’t overreach. Don’t ever cook a meal that has more than one complicated item on the menu. Try to plan menus where most things can be done in advance and where all you have to do is reheat the main dish and cook the pasta (or potatoes or rice) just before dinner. I am also a big believer in buying delicious things that you are either truthful about (because if people love what they’re eating, they have a huge amount of respect for you for simply finding good food) or, of course, passing them off as something you made. Fried chicken, for example, is something I cannot make as well as several take-out places in New York and Los Angeles, including a supermarket on Santa Monica Boulevard. So I just buy it and serve it, along with things I make to go with it, like monkey bread.
I believe in the Rule of Four. Most dinners consist of three things—a meat or fish, a starch, and a vegetable. I think you must always have a fourth—applesauce, or cornsticks, or chutney, or biscuits, or tiny little baked apples, or monkey bread. Not that you should pay attention to these rules of mine; you have to find your own way to entertain. But even if you’re just serving spaghetti and a salad, I’d try to do something with bread—with garlic or rosemary or oregano—to give the meal just a little extra taste.
I try to be very loose about lots of things, but what I mostly believe is that when you have people to dinner, it should be fun, and part of the fun should be in what you eat. It’s sad when you go to someone’s house and they serve something—like a piece of fish, for example—that’s so straightforward that you finish eating dinner in about three minutes. This, actually, is one of my main objections to fish: it’s just too easy to eat, and therefore you should never serve it. People like to play with their food (which is why I go on serving curry and lots of condiments to people years after curry ceased to be chic). They like lots of different tastes. Your hope always is that your guests will go back for seconds and won’t have any trouble staying late and making you believe it was worth it to go to the trouble to have them to your home.
I have learned over the years that:
It is never fun if people in monkey suits serve dinner by going around the table and passing the food. This is why I always just put the food out on a table and let everyone help themselves.
It is absolutely essential to have a round table. If you have people to dinner and make good food and then put your guests at a long rectangular table where people can’t hear what’s going on at the other end of the table and are pretty much trapped talking to the person on either side of themselves … well, what is the point? The perfect round table is a sixty-inch round, which serves ten people comfortably, but a fifty-two-inch round, which serves eight people, is also nice, and a forty-eight- or forty-two-inch round, which will serve six, is also nice. Any round table is nicer than any table with corners.
People like to have a seating plan. They get very nervous when there isn’t one. This doesn’t mean you have to have place cards (although place cards are nice, especially if you use odd things to make them out of, like postcards or something), but it does mean you should have a plan. And it also means you should keep an eye on what’s happening before dinner, and if two of your guests that you’d planned to seat together spend the entire cocktail hour talking to one another, change the seating plan and separate them. Or tell them before dinner that you’ve seated them together at dinner so they can mix with other people beforehand.
A thing I like to do when I have a big round table of twelve people, or two round tables, is change the seats just before dessert. This is a wonderful thing to do because everyone has new people to talk to.
It is very easy to seat a small dinner at a round table. It’s just a question of math most of the time. The rules are: don’t seat anyone next to the person they came with or live with or go with or don’t speak to. It’s nice to seat boy/girl, but I have a friend who seats boy/girl/girl/boy/boy/girl, etc., so that everyone is seated next to one boy and one girl. In California, of course, they never break up couples at dinner for fear of what might happen if someone’s husband were seated next to someone else’s very young girlfriend; but dinners with couples seated next to one another are always deadly dull, which is why there are almost no good dinner parties in the entire state of California.
The Blogger
The First Annual “Tell Us What You’re Cooking This Year for Thanksgiving Dinner That You Didn’t Cook Last Year”
HERE’S THE DEAL about Thanksgiving dinner at our house: it’s the same every year, except for one thing. Every year one thing changes.
Sometimes we try something new and it stays forever, like the apricot Jell-O mold that’s been a guilty pleasure of our Thanksgiving dinner for at least fourteen years.
Sometimes it’s something that makes the cut for several years—like sweet potatoes with pecan praline—and then, for no real reason, falls off the menu never to be spoken of again.
And sometimes it’s a mistake, like the pearl onions in balsamic vinegar, which turned out to be a dish that was far too full of itself.
Anyway, here’s what we’re doing on Huffington Post: the first annual “Tell Us What You’re Cooking This Year for Thanksgiving Dinner That You Didn’t Cook Last Year.”
Send in your recipe. Send in the thing you’ve never cooked before on Thanksgiving Day, the thing that proves conclusively that you’re up for change, that you’re not your mother, that you’re o
pen to new ideas, that you’re flexible and full of surprises and with-it food-wise, even though the truth about Thanksgiving is the exact opposite—it’s about ritual and tradition and the same-old same-old.
This year, in our house, we’re cooking our version of Suzanne Goin’s succotash. Of course Suzanne Goin doesn’t call it succotash; in her book Sunday Suppers at Lucques, she calls it sweet corn, green cabbage, and bacon. We call it succotash because we throw in some lima beans and way more butter:
Cut 6 thick slices of bacon into small pieces and cook in a casserole until crispy. Remove and drain. Melt 1 stick of butter in the remaining bacon grease, and add 1 sliced onion and some salt and pepper. Sauté for a few minutes, then add half a small green cabbage, sliced, and cook until wilted. Add 2 packages of cooked frozen lima beans and 2 packages of frozen corn. Cook about 5 minutes, stirring, till the corn is done. You can do this in advance. Reheat gently and add the bacon.
—November 18, 2007
Hello. By the Way. Whatever.
I DON’T REALLY have anything much to say today, but I thought I’d write anyway because last Sunday I opened up the New York Times Magazine and discovered that Daily Kos had taken a pop at me in an interview with Deborah Solomon:
Q: Do you read your fellow liberal bloggers, like those who write for Huffington Post?
A: To me, Huffington Post gives voice to the voice. They’re celebrities who don’t need a platform.
Q: That’s not fair. You can’t discredit bloggers like Jane Smiley or Nora Ephron just because they have a reputation outside politics.
A: These people don’t have trouble being heard if they want to be heard.
