So
PK says to me the other day, 'The thing is, you think you can cook,
but can't; while I think I can't cook, but can.' Well, whether he has
a point or not, he's evidently not going to get another meal out of me.
At the same time, what
if he does have a point?
A few nights ago we gave some chums a Yotam Ottolenghi-styled chicken
with saffron plus what was, by my standards, rather a subtle Barbera
D'Asti Superiore. I don't know about Yotam, to be honest. I want to
like his recipes, but in my hands they tend to spiral out of control,
what with all the fancy ingredients, and the arduously sophisticated
preparation. The chicken looked a lot more desirable while it was
still sitting in the marinade, if you must know. I am starting to
have doubts.
Which
are confirmed when I dig out a book which has been a mysterious
resident in our household for decades, one of those books which
arrived with my wife all those years ago for no good reason and
which, for no equally good reason, has never been thrown out. It is
Cooking
à la Cordon Bleu,
by Alma Lach, published in the States by Harper & Row around 1970
(no actual publication date) and with a foreword - well, I never - by
Andre Simon, whose ghost hung benignly over our prize, seven weeks
ago.
And
it is a terrifying book. It is written to appal early Seventies
Americans with their ignorance of the finer arts of cooking,
containing as it does, sections on Dark
Warm Sauces; Porc, (with
its we're-all-perfectly-relaxed-about-this opening line 'Pig is the only critter
on God's green earth that goes the whole hog for mankind'); Homard
au Cognac; Poularde Sainte Hélène
(twenty-four
separate ingredients, including foie gras and truffles); French-fried
Cauliflower
('Dip in batter coating no. 3'); Poached
Eggs in Gelatin, Pain D'Epinards
('Put a 2-inch buttered foil collar [step 1, p.336, for instructions
on making collars] around the top of the mold'), and more. And if
that wasn't enough, the wines.
Whoever
picked wine pairings (someone called Dr. George Rezek gets especially
fingered in the Acknowledgments) must have had pockets as deep as the
Pacific. To accompany Jambon
en Croûte
(Ham
in Crust)? A nice Margaux. Rognons
de Veau aux Champignons (Kidneys
in Mushroom Sauce)?
Gevrey-Chambertin. Fish Steaks? Puligny-Montrachet. Chicken in White
Wine? Pomerol. Chicken with Artichokes? Corton Charlemagne. Sauteed
Pork Chops? Erdener Treppchen (German, as it points out). Roast Beef?
Chateau Latour.
It's
an exercise in intimidation, something expressly designed to draw
your own shortcomings to your own, haggard, lack of attention. That's
what cookery books did in the Anglo-Saxon world in those days: they
traumatised housewives and set domestic cooking back a decade.
Besides, if you could afford all those things, either you'd get
someone else to cook them and decant them, or go out to a restaurant.
I mean lobster, truffles, Chateau Latour, I'd have to sell my Kodak stock and
get out of Eastern Airlines just to pay for the main course.
And
yet: there's a part of me that wants to believe in this terrible
gastronomic ransom note, a part that accepts the necessity of
impossible catering when
guests come round,
because that trauma is an essential part of the transaction. Most of
the time for the hard-pressed housewife two generations ago? Chops,
baked beans, Arctic Roll, some kind of dismal salad. Once in a
terrifying blue moon? Aubergines
Farcies
and a Chateauneuf du Pape, whatever that was. Without wholesale
terror and a superabundance of unfamiliar, deathly, ingredients,
there is no commitment, no genuine giving.
I now understand that I must raise my game to a point at which it is
impossible for me to succeed, and give up kidding myself that I'm
basically cool with Yotam. It's Medaillons
de Veau St. Fiacre
(with a nice Fleurie, apparently) from now on, and hang the expense.
Not that PK will ever know.
CJ
I found this online from the NY Times, March 1982:
ReplyDeleteThree significant wine auctions -two in Chicago and one in Boston -have been scheduled for the spring season. Christie's plans to offer the wine collection of the late Dr. George H. Rezek for sale April 17 at the Drake Hotel in Chicago. The 2,300-bottle collection is believed to be one of the most important to come on the market in the United States in recent years. The wines date from the mid-19th century.
Dr. Rezek, who died last September, was a Chicago surgeon and leading figure in gastronomy. He headed the Chicago chapter of the International Wine and Food Society, was chairman of the North American committee of the same society, and was active in the Confrerie des Chevaliers du Tastevin, the Chaine des Rotisseurs and similar groups.