Wolfert
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I've noted your three recipes in the new book that utilize the sous vide technique. There is also a rather active sous vide topic on the cooking forum.
Was sous vide evident when you wrote the first edition of your book?
Is this technique gaining momentum in the Southwestern France region? Is method employed in home cooking in the region, or is it still primarily a restaurant technique?
Do you often use sous vide at home?
Hello Susan,
I wrote about it in the first edition describing how the chefs in Bordeaux were using a $5000 machine (see page 439 in the first edition). I supplied three sous-vide recipes: the salmon with sauce de sorges, the duck sausage (see my website for the recipe), and, in the apple croustade, I suggested in the notes the use of the Dazey Seal-a-meal, a contraption sold here at that time, as a stand in.
Chefs use it in the southwest. I don't know if French home cooks are using it, but Europeans have access to numerous sous vide products in their markets that are just beginning to show up here in the States.
As for myself, I use the method a great deal at home. It makes life easier and it's a lot of fun. My only objection is to the noise of the machine!
The idea for preparing confit of duck sous vide came from Nathanm, a regular here on egullet. He helped me develop the recipe and I thank him for that in the book. Interestingly, I had a confit taste-off for some food people at my home. among them Alice Waters. We tasted the sous vide duck leg in 3 varieties: Muscovy, moulard, pekin, versus 5 month old Moulard duck leg confit done up the traditional way. Everyone admired the moist silky quality and flavor of the sous vide cooked legs, but then Alice said something very interesting. She said it didn't have "chee." (Chee as in the Oriental idea of 'life force.') But when she tasted the duck leg 5 months old, she raved.
Based on her remarks and the opinions of others, I suggest using duck leg confit sous vide for cassoulet where it stands up very nicely to a second cooking and is not the star item of the plate.
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Paula, in the introduction to this Spotlight, you refer to Lucien Vanel, of all the chefs in SW France you met, as having the kitchen sensibility closest to your own. You allude to certain things you admire in the posts and the book, such as his elevation of his mother's home cooking and his thriftiness in using what was available from the previous day to create dishes. Can you perhaps explain in a little more detail what it is specifically about Vanel's kitchen sensibility that strikes a cord with you, as well as the similarities you may have found in your own cooking?
Hello John,
Despite his boyish smile, Vanel was not one of the "Young Turks" of French cuisine that the journalists were agog about. He was more of a " Lone Ranger" type working in the tradition of regional southwestern French cooking. Yet he was as innovative and imaginative as the best of them. To understand my appreciation of Vanel you need to know the cuisine of Quercy, which epitomizes the art of giving great taste to simple ingredients: mushrooms, walnuts, chestnuts, pork, and duck and geese raised for foie gras.
When Vanel was seventeen his mother made him chef at the family inn in Lacapelle Marival in the Lot district. Soon word of the youngster's cooking began to spread; people spoke of extraordinary lightness and flavor. Lucien Vanel's snails with walnuts, his tourtiere of chicken with salsify, and stuffed goose neck on a bed of pureed sorrel were judged exemplary in a region where first rate cuisine is the rule.
Then he went to Paris, ordered sweetbreads at the famous restaurant Denis, and...revelation! "I found they were four times better than my own," he told me. This was when he discovered cooking that went beyond his mother's one star establishment. He subsequently traveled and learned to cook even more lightly by inventing new ways of doing things while still remaining true to his traditions, and untouched by the fads of the day. He returned to his regional restaurant but people were not impressed. They wanted the older food. So he moved to Toulouse and garnered his own two stars doing food he understood but the people around him didn't. I greatly admired his courage and his talent.
By the way, John, I want to thank you so much for helping me nail the duck ham recipe. I don't think there is a better one in print and I owe you a great deal for helping me develop a revised one for the moulard.
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Hello Paula,
In the introduction to the revised version of your second book, "Mediterranean Cooking" (which is my favorite of your books), you write:
"I want once again to tip my hat to my favorite food writer, whom, I'm sorry to say, I never met personally but knew only through her work. I am speaking of the late Elizabeth David, author of many excellent cookbooks, whose classic, 'A Book of Mediterranean Food,' is still for me the most inspiring of all the numerous Mediterranean cookbooks that have been written."
I am curious to know at what point in your life you first read Elizabeth David and "A Book of Mediterranean Food" (was it before or after you had begun writing about food?). Also, in what ways did both she and that particular book influence and inspire you (was it her scholarly approach? her writer's voice? etc.).
Thank you for all your wonderful books.
Steven
Hello Steven,
It was in the late 50's that Dione Lucas suggested I read David's French Country Cooking and Summer Cooking which were then only available in British editions sold at a little book store in NYC that specialized in imported books. Once I read them I ordered the Book of Mediterranean Food and I was hooked. All of this was before I'd ever thought of writing about food. As for what inspired me, I think it was her style and her approach. She really wasn't very scholarly, but she knew a great deal and she was able to convey her passion on the page.
Do you agree?
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The research you've done for all your books has taken you to multiple countries -- what languages do you speak? And when you have no proficiency in the local tongue - how do you communicate?
Tangier was a great place for me to start learning to speak and communicate in other languages. Three languages (FRench, Spanish & Arabic) were spoken by people there but not always by everyone. Sometimes people would start speaking in one language and then suddenly speak a second one ! I learned quickly to communicate with a few words to make contact and then to juggle the languages the way the locals did. This was great training for my work later on. I lived in Paris for 8 years and my children were born there so I speak French.
Before a field trip, I always make a point of learning kitchen vocabularies in languages such as Catalan, Sicilian, Turkish, and Italian, so I can figure out recipes when I read them in a local cookbook, and communicate with home cooks in their kitchens.
I also studied Georgian with a tutor, and Greek following the Pimsleur Method, and managed to speak each well enough (if quite poorly) to get by. (Please Note: I can/t remember a word of either language today.) Aglaia Kremezi can vouch for the fact that I learned to read and speak Greek poorly, because we traveled together through Northern Greece.
As for Georgian, the Georgians would show me off at parties by asking me to write out their name and words in their language. That was fun, but the tutoring I'd received turned out to be uncessary -- they all spoke excellent English!!!
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Hello Paula,
I have a more personal question, if you will.
I'm guessing some of the readers of your books get the impression that you cook and eat the recipes you write about for your everyday meals (although I've seen the inside of your fridge...).
So - I'm wondering, with Thanksgiving right around the corner, what your menu might be? Will there be couscous at the end? Will it be a table full of slow-cooked claypot dishes? Or do you do the traditional green beans, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie? If Food & Wine Magazine showed up to do a "Paula Wolfert's Thanksgiving" (or better yet, if you showed up at my door to cook me Thanksgiving dinner), what would the menu be?
Curiously hungry,
Bruce
Hi Bruce,
No, we don't do a traditional Thanksgiving turkey dinner, because when my daughter comes home for holidays she always asks for couscous and my son always asks for zampone with lentils! Like all kids, they're nostalgic for their favorite foods from their childhoods.
But there is a great Turkey dish I sometimes cook on holidays -- see the turkey recipe I got from Michel Bras in PW World of Food. It's anything but traditional, but, boy, is it delicious! If I showed up at your door to cook for you on Thanksgiving, that's probably what I'd prepare.
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For readers who have not figured it out yet, d'Artagnan is one of the mail order sources for products that Paula lists in the annex in the back of the book.
yeap...flown directly from Scotland.
Paula-
Can pig's blood be used? I have seen it at sevral local Asian markets.
I would imagine it would work. You don't need much, about 1/3 cup for each hare. If it comes in clots, try to break them up with a fork and press them through a sieve before using.
Elie, I really appreciate your enthusiasm to try new things. The stuffed duck neck sausage you tested for the book is on the menu tonight at chez panisse!!
Thursday, November 17 $65
Book signing for Paula Wolfert's The cooking of Southwest France
Duck gizzard salad à la périgordine
Coquilles Saint Jacques with chestnuts and wild mushrooms
Braised Sonoma County Liberty duck leg and stuffed duck neck sausage with
red wine sauce and cornmeal cakes
Prune and Armagnac ice cream crêpes
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Hello, Paula! Thank you for letting us have this conversation with you!
As a native Californian, born and raised in the San Joaquin Valley and now living in Southern California, I remember hearing how similiar California and the Mediterranean are, in terms of the climate yielding such wonderful produce.
Now that you live in Sonoma, near the birthplace of "California Cuisine," do you think that California has certain qualities that remind you of the Mediterranean, culinary and/or otherwise? If so, to what extent? If not, why not?
Thank you.
edited for spelling
Yes, many qualities are the same, and some, of course, are quite different. I think what I like best about living here (besides the great climate) is the niceness of the people and the abundance of great fresh products to work with. But I still harbor my "Mediterranean Myth" -- which draws me back year after year. I'm still a sucker for "the foreign" The Other -- the delightful ways that Mediterranean people have figured out how to live. Northern California is great. It has its own culture and is very American. For me one of the joys of my life is the ability to live so nicely in the US and yet still travel to those parts of the world that I love.
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Paula, how much time did you spend in the field, traveling in the SW, for the rewrite? Was it difficult, when you first started out, mustering up the courage to ask if you could enter a cooks kitchen and observe? For the restauranteurs, did you find that they readily volunteered to cook something specific that you requested, or did you find yourself more of a detached observer in their working kitchen?
Good question. Thank you for asking it. For the rewrite, I didn't do all that much new field work -- just enough to catch what was going on. Remember, I had spent five years working on the first edition so I was very familiar with the region and knew lots of people there. As a result I knew exactly what I needed to do..... refresh my tastebuds, and figure out how to use newly available ingredients to introduce dishes that couldn't be made in the US at the time I first put out the book.
I work differently for each book I've published. Usually I make contact first and then arrive when invited and take away whatever is offered. If you spend enough time in a region you find a balance, and sometimes you're surprised: I may go to a cook for one dish, and take away another that's much more interesting.
Happily I now have a certain amount of "street cred" so I'm usually welcomed by chefs. Also, often a chef I know will call up one I don't know and introduce me. As for courage, I don't think field work is for the timid. You have to go for it because it won't land in your lap. I always prepare myself with a good kitchen vocabulary, and I always bring a home cook a gift -- nothing expensive or fancy, but something I think she might like. When I first meet a woman home cook, I will embrace her, kiss her and then touch my heart -- a way of showing friendship and building solidarity.
I genuinely like these women, and they can feel that. We have fun cooking together. With the chefs it's different. I still bring a gift such as maple syrup or some new fangled whisk. I work on the premise that you give before you take. THen I simply observe taking copious notes. They don't like being bothered during service, but I've been around enough to usually be able to understand what they're doing. If I have questions, I wait til service is finished before asking. It's always fun and exciting to stand in a restaurant kitchen when twenty or more dishes are being prepared at once, and to try and figure out as many as possible. But the greatest pleasure for me is to spend relaxed time in a home kitchen with another woman, with whom I can bond and share the pleasures of good home cooking. Maybe that is why I went back to the Mediterranean after the book was finished.
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The first menu that comes to mind and one that is served at least once a week in every home in SWF, is to take out some confit of duck legs, brown them and serve with something fresh such as pureed sorrel (that you have frozen along with some spinach and cream) and/or potatoes sauteed in a little duck fat. This would be followed by a green salad dressed with walnut oil and banyuls vinegar and topped with walnuts
Another common dinner menu is a chestnut and cepe soup with walnuts. You would have the roasted chestnuts already packaged, or picked up from a street vendor, some dried cepes, stock and walnuts on hand. Good cheese and fruit afterwards.
My larder contains fresh walnuts, walnut oil, dried prunes, prunes in armagnac, quince preserve, liquid honey, frozen sauces, frozen phyllo, confit of gizzards, verjus, duck fat, dried cepes, truffle oil (from plantin.com), chunks of frozen pancetta or ventreche, frozen fresh fava beans still in their pods, stocks, prosciutto or Serrano ham, onion confit, and piment d espelette. With these items on hand you should make most of the recipes in the book.
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Hello Paula-
It has been a great pleasure, reading through and cooking from this one of a kind book.
I have a recipe question for you, about the “Civet of Hare”, it fascinates me and raises all kinds of questions. I have never in my wildest dreams thought about buying an animal, dispatching it in my home and collecting it’s blood. The more I read through the recipe though the more I get how personal it is to you and I actually would like to attempt it if possible and maybe understand why you love it so much.
I have never seen a live hare, let alone have access to one. The only one I can get is frozen. Where would I get a live hare? Is there a substitute? What if I procure a frozen or already dressed one, can the recipe still be done successfully? How/where did the tester test the recipe?
Many thanks for taking the time to join us in this conversation.
In that case, I was the tester. Normally I test all the recipes in my books usually more than three times. The jugged hare recipe was an exception, tested only once because I'm not a hunter or married to one, and didn't have access to a shot hare. I did purchase fresh packed Scottish hare from d'Artagnan and used the liver instead of the blood.
I wrote the recipe in such a way that those who are hunters and know a healthy jack rabbit from one that is sick can make the dish properly as well.
In the introduction I mention the help I received from my friend Aude Clement, who taught me how to cut up a hare and also how to keep the blood.
As for just killing a hare, skinning it and carving it while it's still warm for the pot -- I decided that that was my "maginot line." If you don't hunt just follow the recipe as written (buying a hare, as I did, from d'Artagnan) and leave the rest of fantasy!
As I suggested in the recipe, you can do the dish with American jackrabbit or even duck legs and use duck or chicken liver in place of the blood.
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Paula, congrats on an excellent new edition. Those of us who are devoted to the original are thrilled with the recipe updates (particularly the use of Moulard ducks) and additions, as well as the excellent list of sources in the back (I have already ordered from several of them).
For those who do not have the original, is there a list anywhere of the names of the dishes that were not included? While it makes sense to have removed many of them for the general audience, eGulleteers are a slightly different breed and might be interested in picking up an original edition as well.
Thanks so much for your very kind words.
There isn't a list but I'm in the process of posting all the dropped recipes up on my website.
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Lucy, emotional support is very important on a long-term project (and I worked as long as five years on a project). It's great to have someone to talk to along the way -- try out ideas with, send recipes to -- to hear what she thinks, discuss organizational questions, etc. I like to feel that my editor is really my partner -- not my antagonist. I (and many other cookbook authors, I'm sure) could tell you some hair-raising stories abouyt the latter!
I find that warmth is really important -- warmth and rapport. At this point in my life, I really don't want to work with people who wouldn't in other circumstances be my friends.
Steven, yes, many editors do less, but the really good committed ones are still there for the author, playing a supportive role. For example Maria Guarnaschelli, Susan Wyler, Rux Martin, Linda Ingroia, Leslie Stoker and Jennifer Josephy.
For me the biggest problem in publishing these days isn't that editors do less, but they're so much less important in the publishing scheme of things. These days, as my husband puts it, "too often the marketing tail wags the editorial dog!"
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There are many ways for home cooks to use clay pots. Most any recipe can be adapted to clay pot cookery so long as the pot has the right shape and size and can hold and distribute slow even heat. There is also the pleasure of "coddling" food in clay, a pleasure both sensual and gustatory.
Glazed stoneware pots can be substituted for nearly any type of cooking vessel, and they need less liquid than metal ones. ,
Soaked unglazed pots such as the romertopf have unique properties by which food is steamed in its own moisture.
Some unglazed pots provide a special flavor that only clay can convey such as the mica-rich American Indian beanpots and the southern Moroccan tagines.a special "distinctive thumb print taste" from hand-crafted clay that writers now fashionably call gout de terroir -- the taste of the earth.
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Two dishes that you describe in that section also caught my eye. One is the ‘Pescajoun aux fruits’ which you describe as “crepe batter made with buckwheat and wheat flour and lightened with beaten egg whites, served with fresh diced fruits soaked in liqueur”. I’d like to try and recreate this and would be grateful to hear any other details you might recall regarding the types of fruit and liqueur typically used. I looked on the net a bit for pescajoun recipes but the ones I found do not use buckwheat flour although perhaps substituting half of the regular flour with buckwheat would work Also, are the fruits cooked into the batter or is the finished ‘crepe” rolled around the fruit? .
The pescajoun is very similar to the batter cake on page 365. I would substitute a little rye or buckwheat flour for the regular flour for an earthier taste. I might use pitted prunes or sliced apples that have been soaked in Cognac or Armagnac. And I would beat up one or two of the egg whites and fold them into the batter to provide extra lightness . The pescajoun that I remember is laid flat on the plate and the fruits are baked right in with the batter.
Try the pumpkin cubes with the flognarde batter and let me know. That might be a good idea to do something like that in a black chamba skillet.
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Hi Paula!
I'm curious as to know "which came first" for you: the love of the clay pot solely based on its rustic beauty, or the love of the clay pot, having been fed some amazing dish cooked within its confines? And what was that first dish you were served that had been cooked in clay?
Definitely the rustic beauty: I still have my first clay pot. I bought it in New York
when I was nineteen years old, shortly after I started taking cooking lessons with Dione Lucas. It's a fourteen-inch wide, round, shallow, brown-glazed earthenware pot with a very small opening and a fitted cover on top.
The woman who sold it to me told me it was a French triperie used for cooking tripe. At the time I had no idea what tripe was, but I knew I wanted that pot! There was just something about it: the mysterious shape, the deep rich brown color, the tiny cover which could be sealed with a flour-and-water paste. I've never cooked tripe in it , but have used it a few times over the years to cook beef estouffades. They always emerge exquisitely tender
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Paula, thanks to you I have a new monkey on my back- cooking in clay! Mostly bean pots but I have three tagines and a few other odds and ends to keep the bean pots company.
One interesting thing I've noted is that the tagine recipes really need the amounts of liquid adjusted when cooking in clay, but the more Euro-based recipes seem fine. I just made the braised leeks from Slow Med last night in a glazed Italian pot on the stove and they were just slightly wetter than when I made them in an enameled cast iron pot, and it could have been juicier onions or fresher leeks that accounted for that.
Do you think it's the clay or maybe the way they are fired? The odd thing is the tagines are unglazed yet they produce so much liquid.
Anyway, I can't wait for your next book on clay cooking.
Hi there,
I'm nowhere near ready to answer that question. Maybe someone reading this can help.
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Lucy,
First, thanks very much for your kind remarks about my writing. I blush at the notion that the new edition is a "triumph." But even as I blush, I accept your compliment with humble gratitude.
I have to confess that I hadn't considered an updated version of the book until my editor, Susan Wyler, broached the idea. At first I thought it would be a breeze -- I'd add a few recipes, take a few out, bring in a great food photographer, and put the whole thing together in a couple of months. Little did I know! It took me over a year of hard work. If I'd been aware of the enormity of the task, I might not have undertaken it.
Now, of course, I'm very glad I did. Once I got back into this delicious food (having been away from it for years) I realized that this revision could be fabulous, and there was no point in doing it unless I gave it my all. So the project kind of grew as Susan and I set to work.
I'm very proud that it's been received so well here, and I'm grateful to the 29 testers at egullet who tested for me and supported me along the way. Thanks to the help of egullet I think the project is blessed!
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Where I a home cook in the Southwestern area of France, what would I have used?
Would I have made this meal for a special occasion or a family meal?
And, I have quite a bit of the daube left over. Would I simply store it meat and liquid separated and recreate this meal later this week or would I do something else with the leftovers?
A peek into a Southwestern French home and kitchen, please!
I think you would find exactly the same pot and skillet to make those two dishes.
The oxtail daube is definitely a Sunday dish best prepared a day or two in advance. The leeks, too, can be prepared a few days in advance.
I'll be back with a picture or two.
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Well, it's completely different. My husband, Bill Bayer, as you know, writes fiction, which means he starts with a blank page and creates out of thin air.
I start with facts, observations, tastes, stories I've heard, etc., then put it all together. But as important as the writing is, the recipes are primary. I know one cookbook author (whose name I will not reveal) who actually had the nerve to write me once that she was working hard on her commentary and considered her recipes unimportant!
To me the opposite is the case. The commentary serves to shed light on the recipe. The recipe is the heart, the commentary the embellishment.
What happens is that I'll gather and work up a series of recipes garnered from a trip, twenty or so, and then, when I'm satisfied, I'll review my notes and write the introductions.
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It's really not a systematic process. I work more or less instinctively, but the primary source for everything I do is...FIELD WORK. (Caps intentional!) I can't emphasize this enough. I know some very successful cookbook authors whose fine recipes are derived from their excellent libraries. Their work entails studying texts then working out their versions in their kitchens. I can't seem to work this way -- I need to go there, meet the people, watch them cook, eat with them. When someone asked me why I emhpasize field work so much, I could only reply that I am after more than the recipe, I'm really after the spirit of the dish, the passion of the cooks who execute it well. I love their enthusiasm and find that it feeds my own.
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I was lucky to have had a really good editor from the start. My first was Fran McCullough, already famous for editing Sylvia Plath, Anais Nin, and, in cookbooks, Diana Kennedy. I'm still most grateful for her assistance and commitment to my first book, Couscous, and her supportive work on the first edition of this one. I learned so much from her!
Later I was edited by someone very unlike her. Fran knew how to inspire an author. This other editor (who shall remain nameless) could only bring me down. Thank God I got away from her and found Susan Wyler, who edited "The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen," and also this new edition of SWF. She's been wonderful -- inspiring, thoughtful, always a positive critic.
I know that some authors get quite "high and mighty" about their precious prose, but I've learned that a good editor is a treasure -- when you find one, listen closely to her/him, respect her/his ideas even if you disagree...and never let her/him go!
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Paula,I love the original 'Cooking of south-west France' so much that I'm almost loth to replace it-I haven't seen the new one yet. One of the very,very few truly great food books!
thank you so much. You've made my day!
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Hi Paula . . . Many thanks for joining us. Your comment above absolutely requires me to ask about the pot on the cover of your book. The first thing that came to mind when I first saw it was how odd the shape is. Then came the inevitable question . . . "why?"
And, I don't know whether to thank you or something else for my most recent addiction, clay pots!
I love that pot! Thanks for asking about it, because it's one of my treasures -- a one gallon cassoule or Provencal tian. It's traditional to use something like this for cassoulet. As the beans and liquid bake in my hearthkit lined oven (you can substitute quarry tiles on the sides) a glaze or crust appears. I break it in a few times, adding to the richness below. Then I allow the top to caramelize, achieving a final glaze. Of course you can break the crust no matter what shape pot you use, but the large area on the top creates more crust. (Sometimes I skip the breaking of the crust and use breadcrumbs.)
There is a potter at www.claycoyote.com who will make a replica of this pot for you in stoneware. (The original is earthenware). It's quite handsome and does the same job very well.
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The Pacherence du Vic-Bilh served at Daguin's restaurant was a dry, slightly tangy yellow-white wine. Not sure of the grape varieties but it was a blend. I think you can find both types and more information on wine-searcher.com
Elizabeth David's influence
in An eG Spotlight Conversation with Paula Wolfert
Posted
That's a wonderful compliment and I want to thank you.
You are right about Harvest of the Cold Months and English Bread and Yeast Cookery.
I was answering your query about her Mediterranean books which are more sensual than scholarly.