My Mother's Kitchen

by Peter Gethers

  8 to 12 stalks asparagus, cooked until al dente

  1 bunch basil leaves (FINAL AUTHOR’S NOTE FOR THIS PART OF THE RECIPE: FOR SOME WEIRD REASON, WHEN I WAS SHOPPING FOR ALL OF THIS STUFF I COULDN’T FIND BASIL ANYWHERE. I HESITATED, MEDITATED ON WHAT TO DO, AND TOOK THE PLUNGE, GRABBING A HANDFUL OF MINT INSTEAD. A FEW MINUTES AFTER MY CAREFULLY CONSIDERED CHOICE I PANICKED AND CALLED JANIS. I ASKED HER WHAT SHE WOULD DO IF SHE HAD TO SUBSTITUTE SOMETHING FOR BASIL, BUT I DIDN’T GIVE HER ANY OF THE CHOICES I HAD. SHE PONDERED FOR A MOMENT THEN SAID, “MINT?” I LOVE VALIDATION.)

  ½ pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

  Lemon juice

  DIRECTIONS:

  1. Prepare the brioche dough a day in advance (through step 5).

  2. Slice 1 pound of salmon into small pieces. In the bowl of a food processor, puree the salmon with the salt, pepper, cayenne, and 1 egg. Transfer the mixture to a chilled bowl.

  3. Whip 1¼ cups cream to a soft Chantilly. Over ice, fold the cream into the salmon mixture. Test the mousse for taste and consistency in simmering water (to do this, poach a spoonful of the mousse in simmering water for 4 or 5 minutes. Remove the mousse from the water and taste) and correct the seasoning as necessary. Refrigerate until needed. (AUTHOR’S NOTE: NO WAY DID I BOTHER TO TEST THIS.)

  4. Marinate the remaining 1 pound salmon fillets in a mixture of ½ cup wine, 1 shallot, and the tarragon.

  5. Bring the court bouillon to a boil. Add the crayfish and return to a boil. Remove the crayfish and, when cool, shell twelve of them and reserve the other twelve whole. (NOTE: JUST REMINDING YOU THAT I DIDN’T USE CRAYFISH, I USED SHRIMP, AND EVEN THOUGH THEY WEREN’T ALIVE, I STILL BOILED THEM EXACTLY AS INSTRUCTED ABOVE. IT ALL WORKED FINE.)

  6. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. (NOTE FROM AUTHOR TO COMPUTER KEYBOARD DESIGNERS: WHY THE HELL DON’T YOU HAVE ONE OF THOSE LITTLE CIRCLE SYMBOLS THAT SYMBOLIZE “DEGREES” ON YOUR KEYBOARDS? I HATE HAVING TO WRITE OUT THE WORD “DEGREE” EVERY TIME. COME ON! SHAPE UP!)

  7. Divide the brioche dough in half and roll out one piece ⅜-inch thick on a baking sheet. Spread half of the fish mousse down the center. Arrange half of the salmon fillets over the mousse, top with the asparagus, and spread the remaining mousse over the asparagus. Finally, arrange the remaining fillets over the mousse.

  8. Lightly beat the remaining egg for an egg wash and brush all around the edges of the dough. Roll out the remaining piece of brioche, large enough to cover the fish. Press the edges together and trim. Brush with egg wash. Decorate with strips of dough and poke a vent in the top. Bake for 40 minutes.

  9. While the fish is baking, reduce 1 cup wine, the remaining shallot, the tarragon stems, and ¼ cup cream until one-third of the liquid remains or until the bubbles are thick.

  10. Using the food processor, puree the basil leaves. Add the butter and process until well blended.

  11. Slowly add the basil butter to the reduced wine. Strain and correct the seasonings, adding a bit of lemon juice if desired. Add the shelled crayfish (SHRIMP!) to the sauce, just before serving.

  PRESENTATION: Using an electric knife (or a very sharp chef’s knife), slice the coulibiac into six or eight slices. Nap each plate with the sauce and arrange the whole crayfish (SHRIMP) decoratively on the plate. Center a slice of coulibiac in the plate.

  BRIOCHE RECIPE

  INGREDIENTS:

  To make 2 large brioches or 16 to 18 individual ones

  1 pound 2 ounces all-purpose flour

  2 tablespoons sugar

  1 tablespoon salt

  2 tablespoons dry yeast

  ½ cup milk

  6 eggs

  10 ounces unsalted butter, at room temperature

  1 egg, lightly beaten, saved aside for egg wash

  DIRECTIONS:

  If brioche dough is allowed to rise in too warm a spot, the yeast will be killed and an odor will develop. This recipe should give you perfect results; smaller proportions will not be as successful.

  1. In the bowl of an electric mixer, using the paddle, combine the flour, sugar, salt, and yeast. Add enough of the milk to make a stiff dough that pulls away from the side of the bowl.

  2. Add the 6 eggs, one at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition. Continue to beat until the dough is elastic.

  3. If your machine has a dough hook, substitute it for the paddle and add the softened butter, a small amount at a time, until it is well incorporated and the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl.

  4. Transfer the dough to another bowl, cover with a damp cloth, and allow to rise at room temperature for approximately 1 hour, until double its original size.

  5. Punch down the dough, cover again with the damp cloth, and allow to rise overnight in the refrigerator. Be sure to cover the bowl with a plate weighted with a brick (or other heavy object) to prevent the dough from over-rising and over-fermenting.

  6. Form the dough into two large brioches and place them in lightly buttered 6-cup molds. Allow to rise until double in size.

  7. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. (AGAIN: WOULDN’T IT BE NICE TO HAVE ONE OF THOSE LITTLE CIRCLE SYMBOLS?)

  8. When the brioches have risen and are ready to bake, brush with the egg wash and bake for 20 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350 degrees F (NEED I SAY IT?) and continue to bake for 30 minutes more, or until a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. The baking time will be shorter for smaller brioches. (AUTHOR’S NOTE: I DIDN’T REALLY HAVE TO INCLUDE STEPS 6 THROUGH 8 BECAUSE FOR THE SALMON COULIBIAC, WE ONLY NEEDED TO FOCUS ON STEPS 1 THROUGH 5. BUT I PUT IN THE WHOLE RECIPE FOR TWO REASONS: 1) I JUST LIKE BEING THOROUGH, AND 2) THERE’S AN ACTUAL MISTAKE! I TYPED THE RECIPE EXACTLY AS IT IS IN WOLF’S MODERN FRENCH COOKING BOOK AND, IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, IT SAYS “PREHEAT THE OVEN TO 350 DEGREES” AND THEN, IN THE VERY NEXT STEP, IT SAYS TO TURN THE OVEN DOWN TO 350. I AM NOT SAYING ALL THIS TO ADMONISH WOLF. I AM POINTING THIS OUT TO SHOW THAT ANYONE CAN MAKE A MISTAKE. AS YOU WILL SEE IF YOU KEEP READING.)

  COURT BOUILLON RECIPE

  2 medium carrots

  2 stalks celery

  1 leek, thoroughly washed

  1 sprig fresh thyme or pinch dried thyme

  1 bay leaf

  1 teaspoon salt

  ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

  2 quarts water

  2 cups dry white wine

  DIRECTIONS:

  1. Slice the carrots, celery, and leek into ¼-inch pieces. Put them in a saucepan.

  2. Add the remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Continue boiling for 20 minutes, until the liquid is flavorful.

  Okay … the first thing I did when I finished studying this recipe was to get borderline hysterical. I almost dozed off twice while reading, at some point had to get up and walk around my apartment, and after finally wending my way to the end, all I wanted to do was have a shot of bourbon and smoke a cigarette, even though I’ve never smoked an entire cigarette in my life. You should be getting the point by now: I was unnerved. A brioche? A mousse? Sauce? Several machines? What was I thinking? At the very beginning of this process, I thought that by learning how to do all this and eventually putting together the perfect dinner for my mother, I’d come to some understanding of her and her entire philosophy of life. What I was thinking after going through this recipe is that I was way out of my league and had no shot of pulling this off. Matzo brei was one thing. This coulibiac extravaganza was another.

  Eventually, without benefit of either alcohol or tobacco, I calmed down and read through the directions carefully. If I took it step-by-step, this was doable. It might not be good, but making it was doable. The only thing that worried me was the brioche. Bread scared me. I’d tried baking it several times before and hadn’t done well. But I knew someone who wasn’t afraid of bread. A close friend. Close enough that I decided I could test the limits of that friendship. I called my pal Abby Levine.

  The conversation went better than I thought it would. I played upon his parental sympathies (“Abby,
I’m doing this for my mom. It will mean so much to her”) and our years of being buds and fellow Martini Brothers (“Come on, it’ll be fun. We’ll hang out, we’ll cook, we’ll talk politics, sports, and women. C’monnnnnn”). And I closed the deal with bribery (“I’ll make superb cocktails, I’ll buy you lunch, and I’ll have doughnuts waiting”). He said yes.

  I e-mailed him the recipe and we discussed it over the phone. We concluded that this was a two-day job: one day to go through steps 1 through 5, one day for all the rest. We set a date, several weeks in advance, and I decided to ramp up the stakes: I invited a few people over for dinner that second night, including Abby’s wife, Micheline, with whom I’ve been close friends since before she married Abby, who is a finicky eater and loves to give me a hard time. The pressure was on.

  The first cooking day was a Friday. Abby came over at about one p.m. As promised, I had doughnuts stacked on a plate—coconut cream, vanilla icing, and a cinnamon—and take-out Middle Eastern food from a great place called Mamoun’s, down the block from my apartment. As the pièce de résistance, I also had a cocktail shaker full of boulevardiers, the bourbon version of a Negroni: equal parts bourbon (whereas a Negroni is gin), Campari, and sweet vermouth. I did it up right, crushed ice and everything. Before we started in on the coulibiac, we put ourselves in the mood. We started with the doughnuts, of course. Then had a boulevardier each, then went for the hummus, pita bread, falafel, spinach pie, baba ghanoush, and grilled lamb kebabs. We debated having a second boulevardier, decided it couldn’t hurt, so we poured, sipped, then decided we were ready to tackle the brioche. It was now two p.m.

  I’d bought all the ingredients earlier that morning except for the yeast, which Abby, as a regular baker of bread, had plenty of. The first step involved mixing flour, sugar, salt, yeast, and some milk. This was a no-brainer, especially because I was an old hand with my electric mixer. My KitchenAid is my favorite food-related possession. I am comfortable using it, and I even am reasonably sure which of the various attachments is a paddle.

  So we set up the mixer, poured in the ingredients, and … watched in horror at the disaster spinning right before our eyes. We saw no evidence of a stiff dough pulling away from the side of the bowl. Abby was particularly critical of the mixture and exhibited signs of panic. I insisted we pour in more milk. Abby thought that was a loser move. I did it anyway. Still nothing.

  Stymied, I suggested another boulevardier and we agreed that maybe we should only have half a glass each this time. We did, keeping an eye on the whirling KitchenAid. By the time we were on our second sip, the dough was kind of stiff and sort of pulling away from the sides of the bowl. Despite our amazement that we’d somehow screwed up the easiest stage of the entire recipe, we moved on. Eggs were added. We beat until elastic (the mixture, not us). We then spent a few minutes trying to decide which of the remaining attachments was a dough hook. We finally picked one that seemed right and replaced the paddle. We added the butter as instructed and, once again, waited for the dough to pull away from the sides of the bowl. At some point, Abby said, “The dough’s not even on the sides of the bowl. How can it pull away?” I decided that meant it was ready. So we transferred the dough to another bowl, covered it with a damp cloth, and waited an hour for it to double in size. That hour was quite productive: we polished off the remaining doughnuts, finished our third boulevardiers, and solved most of the world’s problems. When we checked, despite all that extra milk, the dough had, in fact, risen to double its original size.

  Abby allowed me to punch the dough—and really, that’s what you do, you punch the dough as if it’s a speed bag at a gym—and then prepared to put it in the fridge. I ventured an opinion that I didn’t really need to weigh the dough down with a brick equivalent, but Abby explained to me that I was an idiot and that if I didn’t, the mixture might take over my entire refrigerator. Yielding to his greater experience—and having seen The Blob when I was a mere lad—I found a heavy trivet, put that on a plate, put them both on top of the mixture in the bowl, and stashed the thing in the fridge. Abby and I congratulated ourselves on a job well done, although he still insisted it would fail because of all the extra milk. We finished the last doughnut and decided we’d meet again at noon the next day.

  In anticipation of the work we had to do on Day Two, I had looked up the word “coulibiac” to see what it actually was. I’d always assumed it was French through and through, since Wolf taught my mom how to make it in the kitchen of a French restaurant and the only other place I’d ever had it was at Lutèce, for many years New York’s best old-fashioned French restaurant. It turns out those pesky Frogs had appropriated the dish from the Russians. Although the French had probably added the fancy sauce as an accompaniment, unexpectedly I was, once again, delving into my roots.

  Lunch was ready when Abby arrived—Chinese takeout. He was appreciative but said he’d been thinking about it and decided I was still an idiot for adding so much milk to the brioche dough.

  “Oh yeah?” I said, and stepping over to the fridge, I took the trivet-and-plate-covered bowl out with a flourish and revealed a perfect brioche dough.

  Pressing my luck, I staggered Abby just a tad when I revealed that I had also decided to make another of my mother’s favorite dishes for dinner that night. We were going to have the coulibiac as an appetizer and, for a main course, I was making tournedos of beef with a black truffle cream sauce. He covered his surprise with a shrug and an almost imperceptible eye roll and, after boulevardier number one of the day, we were ready to start making the inside of the coulibiac.

  The guests were coming at 7:30. We started cooking around two. We were finished and ready for company at 7:29. This thing is definitely work-intensive.

  The surprise was that none of the work on Day Two was all that difficult. Everything required precision and exactness and those equate to time-consuming. I will say that this also proved to me the value of a real chef having a “line.” There is no way in hell I could have done this by myself. There were too many choices, too many steps happening simultaneously; it was all just too much. Even for the two of us, it was a little overwhelming. Every hour on the hour we would look at each other and decide we would probably be dining around midnight.

  One reason I needed Abby is that he’s mechanical. He can actually fix things that have wires attached to them and put things together by looking at nonsensical line drawings on so-called instruction sheets. The coulibiac recipe called for the use of a Cuisinart and, although I had one, I’d never used it. I had no idea how to attach the blades or feed food into it. If left on my own, I’d be food processor–less (and this from someone whose mother wrote a food processor cookbook!). I’m not sure how I’d managed to avoid the confounded machine for so long, but I had. Abby heard my confession and forgave me for my sins. He handled the Cuisinart like a pro, set it up easily, and allowed me to feed the salmon into the whirling blade. The experience was surprisingly satisfying in a Fargo-like way.

  I worked on the mousse and the fillets while Abby whipped up the court bouillon.

  All the separate elements looked good, so we split the brioche dough and spread half of it on the roasting pan. I layered the various elements—the mousse, the fillets, the asparagus—over that bottom half. We covered the top of the mixture with the remaining dough. Pleased and surprised, I said to Abby that our version looked much the way my mom’s coulibiac looked when she used to make it in L.A. But Abby held up his hand, could no longer hide his self-satisfied smirk, and pulled out a line drawing of a fish that he’d been carrying around all day. He placed the drawing on top of a leftover piece of dough and, using a knife, traced the fish drawing. Then he placed the little fish of dough on top of the coulibiac.

  The salmon coulibiac, ready to go into the oven, with Abby’s brilliant fish tracing

  It turned our cooperative effort into a work of art. Perhaps not a Picasso or a Matisse but definitely a Puck or a Boulud.

  Into the oven it went. Now, all that rema
ined was to prepare the sauce. A breeze. The only question being: Would mint work as a basil substitute? The answer, from all the guests, was a resounding yes. Even Micheline, who, when she walked into my apartment, announced that she hated salmon and wouldn’t even taste it, consumed a fairly hefty piece after hearing all the oohs and ahhs and the praise heaped upon us.

  Was it as I remembered from thirty-five years ago? Yes, it actually was.

  Was it as good? I’m not sure. Would my mother have thought so? Probably not.

  But if she’d been there that night for this tryout, I’m certain she would have agreed with my ultimate assessment and appreciated the language with which it was expressed: it was pretty fucking satisfying.

  SOLFERINO’S STEAK WITH TRUFFLE CREAM SAUCE

  Twenty-five years ago, not too long after Janis and I became romantically involved, I wrote a book about my amazing and very handsome Scottish Fold cat, Norton. The publisher felt confident that the book—called The Cat Who Went to Paris—was going to be a success, so before it was even published I agreed to write a sequel. I knew exactly what the sequel should be and happily the publisher agreed, so Janis, Norton, and I went off to the south of France for a year so I could write about my further adventures with my brilliant feline.

  I had, in my twenties and early thirties, found ways to spend a fair amount of time in Paris and the French countryside—writing a couple of films there, working with authors who lived there, doing business with French publishers. I’d come to love the country, the cuisine, and the culture and was determined that someday I would live in France, specifically Provence. Not surprisingly, it was my mother and her connection to Wolf that led me there.

  Wolf and Barbara got married in 1982 at a hotel and restaurant called Oustau de Baumanière, in the magnificent town of Les Baux. My mom flew over for the wedding (my dad was working and couldn’t make it) and the owner, Jean-André Charrial, treated her like a treasured guest. He even let her do some work in the kitchen, which was my mother’s idea of a perfect vacation. When she returned, she created a picture of the Oustau that I couldn’t get out of my mind, and it quickly settled into my brain as my fantasy retreat.