Life Is Meals_ A Food Lover's Book of Days - James Salter [98]
“That’s one.”
“Possessiveness,” another person said.
“Yes.” He was beaming at our difficulty.
At last someone managed to come up with “addressee.”
“You’re sure there are four?”
“Absolutely.”
No one could think of the last one.
It was after three. Craig thanked us effusively. He’d had a marvelous time, he said. It was so nice to be asked to someone’s house. People tended to be intimidated and not invite him. What they didn’t realize, he said, was that his real pleasure was in the company.
We drifted toward the kitchen door, which, as always seems to happen, was the real entrance, opening into the center of the house. We felt a sense of accomplishment and, it must be said, a certain relief as we walked Craig to his car. It hadn’t been comparable to one of his own royal entertainments, but we’d risen to the occasion.
Fox suddenly emerged from the house and came running toward us. “Bookkeeping!” he cried, his face filled with triumph.
We adapted the Brussels sprout soup from Mireille Johnston’s The Cuisine of the Rose, and in her book it is called soupe de Nevers, named for the city:
SOUPE DE NEVERS
36 Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved
4 carrots, peeled and sliced into rounds
3 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
8 cups hot chicken broth
Salt (not needed if using bouillon cubes for the chicken broth)
Freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons minced chives or parsley
Sauté the vegetables for five minutes in the butter and oil. Place in a large saucepan with the broth and bring to a boil. Cook for fifteen minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste, and garnish with the parsley or chives. Serves eight.
The potato dish, called gratin dauphinoise Madame Cartet, is one of many good ones in Patricia Wells’s Bistro Cooking
GRATIN DAUPHINOISE MADAME CARTET
1 garlic clove
2 pounds baking potatoes (like russets), peeled and thinly sliced
1 cup freshly grated French or Swiss Gruyère (or Emmenthaler or the like)
1 cup heavy cream or crème fraîche
Rub a shallow porcelain baking dish with the garlic, cut in half. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Layer half the potatoes. Cover with half the cheese and half the cream. Add salt. Repeat with a second layer. Bake, uncovered, until the gratin is crisp and golden on top (fifty to sixty minutes). Add pepper to the top, if desired. Serves four to six.
LIEBLING
A. J. Liebling, journalist and New Yorker writer, was born on this day in 1904. His interest in food was established early, in the days of 1926–27 when he was a student in Paris at the Sorbonne, or at least enrolled there, since he spent most of his time in cafés, inexpensive but worthy restaurants, and on the streets. All of it is vividly brought to life in his memoir, Between Meals.
He wrote prodigiously in a style admired for its grace, generosity, and erudition. He was fond of saying that he could write faster than anyone who could write better and better than anyone who could write faster. His favorite subjects were boxing, France, food, and the press, and his favorite people were those who lived precariously or bravely. Among the last things he wrote was a series of articles based on a final, sentimental journey to France, which he had visited many times. He wanted to call it Recollections of a Gourmet in France, but his editor at The New Yorker objected that no one would ever call Liebling, whose appetite was gargantuan, a gourmet, so the title was changed to Memoirs of a Feeder in France.
“The primary requisite for writing well about food,” he wrote elsewhere, “is a good appetite. Without this, it is impossible to accumulate, within the allotted span, enough experience of eating to have anything worth setting down.”
His more than fifteen books are remarkable for their enduring freshness. He died in 1963, gouty, bald, overweight, a victim of his habits. His last words were uttered in an ambulance, unintelligible, but in French.
JONATHAN SWIFT
Jonathan Swift died on this day in 1745, perhaps