John Whiting

Since the frame of reference has extended beyond periodicals devoted to cooking, let me cite an outstanding one which hasn't been mentioned. Slow, the magazine of the Slow Food Movement. This is a quarterly devoted to the artisanal food of various countries. Sometimes there is a unifying theme; the latest is devoted to butchering. This includes separate articles on killing pigs, a sympathetic presentation of vegetarianism, humane methods of butchering, halal, growing up in an Italian butcher's shop, animal icons on tinned meats, are pigs unclean?, sausages, la sanguette (blood pudding), animal sacrifice, the art of carving, a history of knives, and finally, the preparation and consumption in Japan of the potentially fatal fugu, or puffer fish. What all the articles in all the issues have in common is that they are never related in any way to the ads, or to any commercial interests whatsoever other than the cause of artisanal food production. Unlike most food-related publications, it can afford the luxury of habitual integrity. This is their web site: http://www.slowfood.com/cgi-bin....ult.jsp

It only takes a couple of wreckers to ruin an unmoderated chat room. Since response of any sort constitutes a victory, the only defence is to totally ignore them.

One of the biggest factors in the dangers of drunken driving is, alas, unmeasurable, uncorrectable and unresponsive to legislation. The most dangerous drunk drivers are those who become overconfident and agressive; there is much less threat, drunk or sober, from those who are happy and relaxed. It comes down to whether one's instinct is to reach for the accellerator or the brake. If drivers drove cooperatively rather than competitively, highway fatalities would virtually disappear. It's interesting that the highest accident rates in all countries are among males under about 25.

Of course this was back before the tightening of the noose. This was the country which defined an alcoholic as someone who consumed an average of three litres of wine per day.

A few years ago a good friend came to visit my wife and me at a salubrious bed and breakfast farm in the Loire, run by an English couple. He had no car and so we picked him up at the train station in Angers a dozen miles away. It was a hot afternoon and so we stopped for a kir before returning. Back at the farm we broke open a bottle of ice-cold muscadet, and then another. The afternoon passed pleasantly and Frank asked our hostess if she could set another place for dinner. No problem. Delicious roast chicken appeared, together with more crisp musadet. Frank checked his railway timetable and determined that the last train back to Paris was at 9:20. At nine we piled into the car again, I located the ignition with some difficulty and we drove merrily away. With minutes to spare we arrived at the station. No train, no waiting passengers. Frank consulted his timetable again and determined that the train we had come to catch didn’t run on a Sunday. Today was Sunday. Oh well, Madame had another room available. Back into the car, back to the farm. The last leg of our journey was through a tiny village with a single narrow street. A road block was set up and a couple of cars were waiting in line while the driver at the head of the queue was blowing into a little plastic bag. A quick calculation told me that I alone had accounted for at least two bottles of muscadet. Mary had refused to drive in France. There, I thought, goes the rest of our holiday. The moment of truth arrived. I blew boldly into the bag and waited for the earth to open up and swallow me. The officer held out the colored bag for me to see. “You are on the line,” he said in perfect English. “Be very careful.” On the line? What line? The Maginot Line? The line of least resistance? Carefully I let out the clutch and we continued back to the farm, where we celebrated with another cold bottle.

The foods I care about are much more readily available to me, and in superabundance, than they have ever been in the past. However this has come about, and whatever the price (as opposed to cost), I would not willingly give it up.

You make me feel ashamed! We must take advantage of our good fortune.

Good, because I suspect that your palate is more highly developed than mine, certainly where Indian cuisine is concerned. For one thing, you've been able to afford to exercise it more vigorously.

Interesting. In spite of his political bias, I find Simon's take on "integrity" in a restaurant to be instantly and totally comprehensible. Perhaps some people relate more profoundly and accurately to sensations than to abstract ideas. (Simon, I hope you read that as a compliment rather than an insult.)

JD - May I be so presumptuous as to offer the opinion that you have a remarkably perceptive overview of food writing as a genre? What that means, as usual, is that I largely agree with you. (I'll probably discover at some point that you're one of the top pros posting under a pseudonym!) John Thorne, yes, he's a wise man, a casually polished writer and a good friend. (There's a paean of praise to him on my own web site.) John & Karen Hess -- no, they're not indulgent of others' shortcomings, but they are truly magnanimous in their praise of those they admire. Again, I am biased by friendship and feel that they have been the Cassandra and Jeremiah who have been outspokenly courageous in their exposure of the food industry's coopting and degrading of "gourmet" food for commercial purposes. As the Hesses pointed out, many respected food writers cooperated enthusiastically and profitably. As I wrote in my obituary for Craig Claiborne in the Guardian: "When confronted with the American food industry, Claiborne’s lofty standards took a nose-dive. Of the pre-cooked frozen foods which were just coming on the market, he wrote, '1958 is loaded with promise – especially for cooks on the run. The past twelve months initiated a trend that is sure to be developed more fully - the packaging of dishes with a so-called Continental touch that can be heated and brought to the table within minutes - to the awe and delight of guests with educated palates.' "Such lapses in taste, continuing unabated, would come to embrace even the Big Mac with the accolade, 'on a par with Howard Johnson’s'. This dubious praise was given added irony by the fact that Pierre Franey had become the ubiquitous chain’s executive chef. "In gourmet guise, his enthusiasm for pseudo-foods surfaced regularly in his cookbooks. The classic beurre blanc is traditionally assembled with meticulous care from shallots, white wine vinegar, seasoning and a pound of butter; Claiborne dispensed with both its difficulty and its delicacy by substituting a mere six tablespoons of butter, a cup of heavy cream, an egg yolk, two tablespoons of lemon juice - and Tabasco sauce! (He later recanted; the recipe résumée in his NYTimes Food Encyclopedia outlines the orthodox method.) "With Claiborne’s assistance the word 'gourmet', like food itself, would ultimately be processed and packaged so as to lose not only its inherent character, but even its snob appeal. Inedible glop would be taken off the shelf, relabelled with the magic word, and sold for double the price. We are still eating the consequences." So perhaps, JD, you can tar me with the same brush. (Some of the Claiborne quotes you'll no doubt recognize from _The Taste of America_.)

Here's a response from the "inner circle", from a reliable source I know very well but shouldn't identify:Jill Norman strenuously denies this and says it's libel. It was stated as true by Lisa Chaney, the first biographer of E. David and as Jill refused to help her with any of the private papers there was ill feeling between them.

A couple of years ago there was a very interesting, even decent, restaurant in an ancient stone building in the tiny central area of old Washington, run by an eccentric, voluble and dedicated chef who had been a stockbroker and decided he'd had enough. The two nights I was there he was open 'til late and then he and the entire staff had a party that went on into the wee hours. He was so good, the area was so unlikely, and his attitude was so unbusinesslike that I imagine the ancient stone monument now houses a hairdresser's.

_Reflexions_ is a remarkable book. John Thorne found it so disturbing that he spent a good part of one issue of _Simple Cooking_ coming to terms with it. At the time I wrote him as follows: John, I wondered how you would respond to Richard Olney’s last will and testament. I could imagine his friends and associates gathered for the reading, each waiting anxiously to learn whether he had inherited a blessing or a curse. Now that it has been made public, the general reader can leaf through the index, looking up familiar names and listening for the gong or the raspberry. The long-awaited memoir reminds me of the question with which Mort Sahl used to close his gigs at the hungry i: “Is there anyone here I haven’t offended?” Why is it that truly great writers so often feel the need to end their lives by settling scores and racking up points, not only against their rivals, but even their lesser contemporaries who would be forgotten save for a posthumous jab of the stiletto? Hemingway’s _A Moveable Feast_ is spoiled by this compulsion, which permeates an otherwise tasty banquet like a handful of bitter herbs. Olney positively smacks his lips over MFK Fisher’s mistaken memory, an unspecified number of years later, of her nocturnal visit to him in 1970. Eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable. (It may even be that Olney is himself confusing two separate occasions.) Larry Adler, in his cheekily titled autobiography, _It Ain’t Necessarily So_, tells of an OSS mission in Berlin which he accompanied in 1945. His friend, a member of the unit, remembered it in elaborate detail as an heroic adventure; Adler’s memory was of a shameful failure in which the Brits behaved like arrogant Nazis. But the two men remained friends, taking great delight in an after-dinner double act in which they would entertain the guests with their conflicting narratives. Surgeons, mathematicians, composers and painters may be allowed to divorce their professional competance from their personal shortcomings, but food writers are so intimately involved with our most essential activity that dehumanization is a fundamental flaw. It even goes beyond the intellectual poverty which you so perceptively identified in “Cuisine Mécanique”. There’s really no excuse for Olney’s hatchet job on Fisher’s intellect, palate and prose. (I suspect that Eda’s ready agreement may have been motivated by a desire to please and/or a fear of dismissal by association.) The reader learns more about Olney than about Fisher, and the outcome does him no credit. In fact, the reflection which is finally returned by the mirror is of a perfectionist who single-mindedly reduces every person, every situation, even every historical event, to its culinary significance. There is a lack of warmth, of compassion, and ultimately of perspective which sadly lowers one of the great talents of his generation to the status of a trainspotter. He would have been incapable of writing, or even comprehending, Paul Henderson’s humane summing up at the end of his perceptive appraisal of contemporary British cuisine, _Cornucopia_: “It is a hard thing to say, but fine food is far from the most important thing in the world. It is not really a question of reaching perfection – that would be too much to ask – nor of lotus-eating, but of finding and maintaining a level of confidence in the food we eat day by day that enables us to get on with the rest of our lives."

QUOTE: "Elizabeth David had a huge influence on Alice Waters and her philosophy and culinary style at Chez Panisse. (Waters's other shaping influence was Richard Olney, who was close to Elizabeth David)." Richard Olney met Kermit Lynch, the Berkeley wine merchant, in 1974; that same year Lindsey Shere discovered his newly-published _Simple French Food_ through a James Beard column and showed it to Alice. In 1994, the circle came together in _Lulu’s Provençal Table: the exuberant food and wine from the Domaine Tempier vineyard_, in which Olney presented the hearty, eminently practical Provençal dishes of Madame Peyraud, with a warm introduction by Alice Waters, who had made the project happen. The photographs are by Kermit Lynch’s wife, Gail Skoff.

Bakers' Dozen is an organization of professional and amateur SF Bay Area bakers, started in 1989 by (among others) Lindsey Shere of Chez Panisse. They have a web site: http://www.bakersdozen.org

Pitter, are you by any chance a member of Bakers' Dozen?

Towards the end of her writing career, E. David's public acclaim earned her the right to produce serious gastronomic scholarship. Steven Sullivan, who had baked for Chez Panisse and founded the Acme Bakery (Berkeley) in 1983, says that he learned his craft by working his way straight through her _English Bread and Yeast Cookery_, which had come out in America three years before. Considering the crucial differences between English and American flours, this was a considerable achievement. E. David never suffered fools gladly and towards the end of her life became increasingly morose. One of the saddest occasions I remember was a TV interview, the only one she ever granted. Her condition was that it be conducted at her favorite table in Franco Taruschio's Walnut Tree in Abergavenny, Wales. (I was gratified to discover that it was my favorite table as well -- out in the pub area near the bar, not tucked away in the posh restaurant.) Mary and I settled down in front of the TV, awaiting words of wisdom. Alas, she barely opened her mouth. The interviewer would ask a question and she would reply monosylabically, or with merely a grunt. The producer would have done the world a service if he had cut his losses and scrapped the program. I took a video copy, but I could never bring myself to look at it. E. David is yet another example of a writer who should survive in her work, not in the exposé of disparaging biographical detail. Her books are entities in themselves; immersed in their riches, I feel no more need of such irrelevant trivia than when I listen to a Chopin etude.

E. David has always been a maddening place to start in one's cooking career; she's best approached with at least a rudimentary knowledge of basic techniques. (What, for instance, does the neophyte do with the instruction, "Cook the eggs with the milk"?!) But the results can be memorable. The first time I made her sauce bolognaise from _Mediterranean Cooking_ I ended up saying, like the man in the Alka Seltzer ad, "I can't believe I ate the whole thing!"

Curry plants grow easily in London; in fact, a few have appeared spontaneously in our garden. (We haven't used them, only identified them.)

Goes with the melting prose.

Frieda, your description makes me want to revisit St. Trop at the earliest opportunity. You'll recall from _Through Darkest Gaul_ that most of my brief time there was spent trying to make a phone call.

"Food writing's guilty secret is its intellectual poverty," writes John Thorne, himself a notable exception to his own generalization. E. David is one of a handful of food writers (including also MFK Fisher, Waverley Root, John & Karen Hess, Richard Olney, Colin Spencer and not so many others) who can take their place in the pantheon of genuine prose stylists: those fortunate few who can structure both the form and the content of an essay as skillfully as a master chef can turn out a dish.Julian Barnes has recently written about her in _Something to Declare_. The chapter was reprinted in The Independent, 9th Feb 2002 CLICK HERE It is so accurate and so well written that even her closest friends acknowledge that he has captured her about as well as can be done in a single short essay.

England - the cheese course.

See David Burton's, _The Raj at Table_, Chapter 8, "Soup": "Before the arrival of the British, the concept of soup as a separate course was unknown to Indian cookery. Such soups as there were had been used as thin sauces, poured over plain rice and mixed with dry curries, but never drunk by themselves, due to the Indian custom of serving all the dishes of a meal at the outset rather than course by course.... When the British arrived they insisted on a separate soup course...." He goes on to say that there was a tendency among some Indian cooks to simply make these soups out of the previous day's leftovers, and so an "authentic" mulligatauny is difficult to establish.

If it's New England baked beans you're thinking of, and not cassoulet and all the other endless European variations, then the place to start is the chapter, "Knowing Beans", in John Thorne's _Serious Pig_.