She hobbled in on crutches—she had hurt her foot—and made her way to our table. In front of each place setting was a festive menu that listed the meal, course by course. As my mom perused the menu, her eyes lit up. The final item listed was Château d’Yquem.
Yquem is, without question, the greatest dessert wine on the planet. A Sauternes from the southern region of Bordeaux, in 1855 it was designated a Premier Cru Supérieur—Superior First Growth—acknowledging its superiority over all other wines of this type. It is the only Sauternes so honored. I am hardly an expert, but Yquem is far more complex than any sweet wine I have ever tasted. A sip seems to spread flavor from head to toe, filling the entire body with a combination of sweetness and depth that no other wine can achieve.
In the 1960s and early ’70s, not too many people were imbibing Yquem, but my dad loved it and had cases of the stuff, at a cost of ten dollars a bottle. Today, you can probably find a bottle for seven or eight hundred dollars, although top vintages go for way more than that. I’ve seen bottles on sale for $15,000 and more. That’s for one bottle. In 2011, at an auction, a bottle of 1811 Yquem was sold for $117,000! My mother, who was not a big drinker in those days, always went into raptures when sipping it. And her appreciation for Yquem never flagged, although she could no longer afford to buy it by the case.
When my mom saw that the Riggios were serving Yquem that epochal night, to say she got excited is a bit of an understatement. Somewhere around one a.m. the party was still going strong but Janis and I were exhausted. We told my mom we wanted to leave and that, since she was on crutches, we’d help get her home in a taxi. My mom said, “They haven’t served the Yquem yet.” I said, “I know, but we’re tired.” And she said, quite ferociously, “I’m not leaving until I get my Yquem!”
Bad foot and all, she made her way over to Louise Riggio to ask when the dessert wine might be coming. Louise, the perfect hostess, immediately went to check it out. On her way back, she passed our table, leaned in to me, and said, “Your mom really likes her Yquem.” All I could do was shrug and say, “She’s an animal.”
We stuck around another hour or so until my mother had a glass of her beloved sweet wine. Or, rather, three or four glasses. We finally poured her into a cab and she went home soused but satisfied.
This led to another yearly ritual.
My mother’s birthday and her sister Lil’s birthday fell a couple of weeks apart: my mom’s was on August 30 and Lil’s was in mid-September. When Lil was about to turn ninety-four, we decided it was time to have a dual celebration. The Riggios have a close friend, Starr Boggs, who runs a wonderful eponymously named restaurant in Westhampton. So after some back-and-forth, we divvied up the responsibilities: Toward the end of August, I’d rent a stretch limo and take fifteen people to Starr’s for my mom’s birthday. Starr would prepare a major feast, I’d pay for the car and the dinner, and Len and Louise would bring the wine. The first year we did this, I’m sure prodded by their remembrance of my mother’s obsession, Len and Louise brought two bottles of 1967 Yquem—one of the great vintages.
My mother was thrilled, of course, but my ninety-four-year-old auntie went berserk—she had never tasted this particular quaff before and couldn’t believe how good it was. Len noted that night that one bottle would generally suffice for fifteen people or so, since Yquem is usually sipped slowly and savored appropriately. But these two old dames guzzled it like there was no tomorrow, and between them they probably drank half a bottle. Standing in the parking lot after dinner, my aunt Lil took my arm and told me how much she loved the dessert wine. “Peter,” she said, “could I buy that on my own?” “You could,” I told her, “but the bottles that Len brought tonight, if you bought them today, they’d probably cost a few thousand dollars.”
For one brief moment, I thought I’d given my aunt a heart attack. But she recovered, staggered into the limo, and never again brought up the idea of buying a bottle on her own.
We repeated this ritual celebration for the next several years. It was always the same: the limo, the spectacular meal, the great wines, and the final presentation of two bottles of Yquem. Then, a few weeks before my aunt’s ninety-eighth birthday, she went into the hospital with heart problems and had a fairly serious operation. I called her when she was still in the hospital and asked how she was feeling.
“I was really scared,” she told me. “I thought this was it. But when I came out of the anesthesia, do you know the first thing I asked the doctor?”
“No,” I said.
“I asked him if I’d be able to drink dessert wine in a couple of weeks. He said yes, thank God, so everything’s okay.”
That year’s party, in August 2008, was as fun as always. The pastry chef at Starr’s made a strawberry shortcake at my mother’s request, and, as usual, Len and Louise brought the Yquem. Lil and my mom drank it happily, and they both even took a glassful with them to drink during the ride back to Sag Harbor. Lil died a few weeks later, not quite reaching the century mark but having lived long enough to, once again, have the pleasure of filling up on Yquem.
The annual birthday celebrations continued on. In August 2015, when my mom turned ninety-three, we once again got in the limo with our various guests, drove the forty-five minutes from Sag Harbor to Starr’s restaurant, and had a wonderful celebration. My mother recalled that after the previous year’s dinner she’d awakened the next morning with a major hangover, so she cut back on the red and white wine and saved most of her drinking for the Yquem.
While she sipped it, I did my best to make a toast. I tried to read from the opening pages of this book but it didn’t go too well. I’d read a sentence, get choked up, start again, burst into tears, maybe get through a whole paragraph, have to stop. People seemed to be moved by my display of emotion; I just felt like an idiot because, while I had no trouble writing about my mom, I was unable to read this to her aloud.
Almost all of this book was written while my mother was alive, which is why I kept most of it in the present tense. It never felt right to use the past tense when writing or talking or thinking about my mom. Sadly, she didn’t get to taste my salmon coulibiac or the truffle-covered filet mignons or the tarte tatin. She didn’t get to taste the challah, either, although she was around to take great pleasure in my detailed description of my dismal attempts at making it.
At my mom’s final birthday celebration, my emotions got the better of me and I didn’t make it through the passages I intended to read. But my mom got the gist of it—and when, at last, I gave up and retreated to my seat—she raised her glass of Yquem. Her eyes shone with happiness and I could tell she was reveling in the love that was radiating from all of us around the table. And I knew what she was thinking:
You’re lucky.
Also by Peter Gethers
FICTION
The Dandy
Getting Blue
Ask Bob
WRITTEN AS RUSSELL ANDREWS
Gideon
Icarus
Aphrodite
Midas
Hades
NONFICTION
The Cat Who Went to Paris
A Cat Abroad
The Cat Who’ll Live Forever
THEATER
Old Jews Telling Jokes (cocreated with Daniel Okrent)
A Bed and a Chair: Sondheim/Marsalis (cocreated with Jack Viertel and John Doyle)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PETER GETHERS is an author, screenwriter, playwright, book editor, and film and television producer. His eleven previous books include The Cat Who Went to Paris, the first in a bestselling trilogy about his extraordinary cat, Norton. He is also the cocreator and coproducer of the hit off-Broadway play Old Jews Telling Jokes. He lives in New York City; Sag Harbor, New York; and, whenever possible, Sicily. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
I. Amuse-Bouche
Chapter 1
II. Breakfast
Chapter 2
III. Lunch
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
IV. Dinner
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
V. After-Dinner Drink
Chapter 9
Also by Peter Gethers
About the Author
Copyright
MY MOTHER’S KITCHEN. Copyright © 2017 by Peter Gethers. All rights reserved. For information, address Henry Holt and Co., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.henryholt.com
Cover photograph by Tsuji/iStock; cover design by Nicolette Seeback
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Gethers, Peter, author.
Title: My mother’s kitchen: breakfast, lunch, dinner, and the meaning of life / Peter Gethers.
Description: First edition.|New York: Henry Holt and Company, [2017]|Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016042322|ISBN 9780805093308 (hardcover)|ISBN 9781250120656 (electronic book)
Subjects: LCSH: Gethers, Judy.|Gethers, Peter—Family.|Food writers—United States—Biography.|Cooks—United States—Biography.|Authors—United States—Biography.|Cooking.
Classification: LCC TX649.G48 G48 2017|DDC 641.59092 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016042322
First Edition: April 2017
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