Elizabeth David's works

[Priscilla]

The last article in my paperback edition of Is There a Nutmeg in the House is Asher's obituary of Elizabeth David, published (I think) in the Times.  It is several pages long and answers to the description you give: trip to California, etc.

Could this be the piece you are thinking of?

Yes, JD, that is absolutely it, thank you for that.  Did find my tearsheet (tucked in AOaaGoW), it was from the LA Times, reprinted from its original publication in the Independent.

A lovely affectionate piece.  I'm glad it was chosen to close the book.

Priscilla

[Jonathan Day]

John, you are very kind.  I am not a pseudonymous pro -- nor, I hope, a professional pseud. Much of what I do for a living involves writing, but not about food. Perhaps that will be a second career some day.

It's hard to know what to think about Claiborne.  On the one hand there was the readiness to compromise, the comfort with tinned gravies and adulterated "gourmet" recipes. On the other, he seemed to have a large and positive influence at a time when good food, fresh ingredients and caring restaurants were in the minority. He discovered such talented cooks and writers as Virginia Lee.  In the main, wasn't he on the right side?

I feel the same way about Julia Child, despite the Hesses' anger at her.  No, she was neither French nor a chef, and my guess is that she wasn't all that proficient a cook on her own. And though her books have a treasured place on my shelf, that is where they usually stay. But she helped open a new world for me. I still remember, as if it were yesterday, cooking suprêmes de volaille à blanc from one of her books, the first "French" dish I ever made. The chicken breasts had come frozen from our local supermarket and the sauce was unnecessarily doctored with bad cream and bouillon from a cube. Nonetheless, it was so incredibly good by comparison with our usual dinners that I ate it, and my parents and siblings ate it, in complete silence -- an unusual event in a family of 6.

I agree with you about "gourmet" -- as you so neatly put it, a word so thoroughly processed and packaged as to lose its character. This has been going on for a good while. One of MFK Fisher's essays talks about a friend of hers, desperate because the boss is coming to dinner. "I've got to gourmet up the pot roast," moans the friend. Now we have gourmet restaurants (=high prices); gourmet kitchens (=stainless steel, 6 burners on the hob -- never mind that the knives are dull, the oven is small and the burners barely heat); gourmet magazines; the gourmet aisle in Sainsbury's; the galloping gourmet; the frugal gourmet.

Yet it could be far worse. I find it far easier to sort out the chaff than to be unable to find interesting ingredients. Yes, there are "gourmet" coffee shops every 200 metres, but at least you can now find an espresso without having to travel across town.

I guess I would rather live in a world full of "gourmet" stuff, much of which is silly and expensive, than one in which the food revolution had never happened. It doesn't bother me that the magazine racks are full of gastro-porn as long as I can get eGullet, PPC, Gastronomica, etc. When I was growing up, none of these were available.

[John Whiting]

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.