Life Is Meals_ A Food Lover's Book of Days - James Salter [120]
DINING ROOMS
On this day in 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt’s cabinet members, seated in the State Dining Room, raised their glasses in a toast to the White House. Remodeling had just been completed, with the living quarters enlarged to accommodate Roosevelt’s wife and six children and the public rooms reorganized and renovated.
When Thomas Jefferson was president, he used the State Dining Room as his office and let his pet mockingbird fly around at will. Later, Andrew Jackson, a man used to the rough life of a soldier, nevertheless found it necessary to have the White House stables moved away from the dining room windows, so the smell of manure wouldn’t overwhelm the food. Now Roosevelt hung the walls with his hunting trophies and no longer had to have the floor reinforced each time he hosted a dinner.
Dining rooms had only come into fashion during the previous century—first in the country houses of the English aristocracy and then during Queen Victoria’s reign—as part of the homes of the middle class. Before that, eating was done in the kitchen, near the fire, on a table pulled away from the wall for meals.
ROQUEFORT
Of the three great blues—Roquefort, Stilton, and Gorgonzola—Roquefort is the only one made from sheep’s milk and is also the one with the longest history, going back at least to the first century A.D., when Pliny the Elder praised it. It has always been made in the same location, in the caves of Combalou in southwest France, not far from the sea. Its origin was probably accidental, perhaps when a piece of bread and some dry cheese left together in the caves allowed bread mold to infuse the cheese and transform it.
Roquefort was Charlemagne’s favorite cheese, and Casanova extolled it in combination with Chambertin wine as a great restorative. Rabelais, who practiced medicine in the region, claimed he always had Roquefort within reach.
The bread mold, penicillium roqueforti, is today still supplied from bread injected with a pure culture of it, and the cheese is perfected during months spent in the caves.
These caves—and no other location has been able to duplicate their exact qualities—have fissures that allow cool, moist air to circulate while the temperature remains a constant 44‑48 degrees F year-round. Like certain valuable vineyards, the caves are controlled by a group of commercial societies, more than a dozen of them.
Genuine Roquefort has been protected since 1411 by a charter given to the nearby village of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon. Each cheese weighs about six pounds and is marked by a distinctive stamp of a red sheep. It can be bought in smaller wedges but is better when cut fresh from the whole cheese.
The inimitable Curnonsky Prince of Gastronomes, recommended that a meal-ending Roquefort be accompanied by a bottle of Clos de Vougeot or Haut Brion. Foolish to disagree.
CROSS-COUNTRY DINNER
Five days before Christmas in 1993, we gave a big dinner party in our old house in Aspen. To begin, there was cross-country skiing at dusk out past the high school. Halfway along the trail, we had a table with small baked potatoes, sour cream, and caviar. Vivaldi was playing on a portable CD player. There was ice, vodka, and candles.
Everyone came back to the house freshened by the cold. There were fifteen of us. A wood fire was blazing. The buffet was gravlax, celery remoulade, cold cucumber soup, and tapenade. Further down the table was a tien de legumes from Patricia Wells’s Bistro Cooking and shepherd’s pie. Dessert was gâteau au chocolat, pear and almond tart, and coffee. The wine was a simple Cotes du Rhône. It was an unforgettable snowy night.
The cold cucumber soup is a favorite in summer and winter:
CUCUMBER SOUP
4 tablespoons butter
½ cup chopped onion or 2 leeks, sliced and cubed
4 cups diced, unpeeled cucumber