The French Menu Cookbook: The Food and Wine of France - Season by Delicious Season. Richard Olney

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       PREFACE

      Until I came to France in 1951, my knowledge of French cooking was mainly academic. I had practiced with a passion what could be gleaned from books—Escoffier, in particular. But the rock on which my church was built was the provincial kitchen of my home in Iowa—not too bad a background, inasmuch as I grew up at a time when eggs were still fresh, Jersey milk was unpasteurized and half cream, chickens were from the back yard, packaged cake mixes and frozen foods were unknown, and garden fruits and vegetables were eaten in their proper seasons. Fortunately for me, my mother, who had eight children to raise and little enthusiasm for cooking, was delighted by my willingness to experiment in the kitchen. Pot roasts, sage-and-onion dressing, and angel-food cakes were more in order at that time than the sort of preparations that occupy me now. But even in those early days I learned to rely on Escoffier for inspiration.

      My life in France has been more or less equally divided between Clamart, a Parisian suburb, and Solliès-Toucas, a village in the south of France.

      In 1953, Clamart was still a provincial town at the edge of a forest to which a handful of Parisians brought their picnic lunches of a summer Sunday. The bordering cafés recalled, in every detail, the guinguettes of impressionist paintings with their cheerful patrons enjoying meals at outdoor tables. The house in which I then let an apartment was surrounded by an unkempt garden and hidden from the street and from neighbors by high stone walls. Although in an advanced state of decay, it was a handsome piece of architecture and, like most nineteenth-century French houses, its cellar was well designed to receive wines, which I began promptly to collect. (After a bit of experimentation, I settled on a formula of bottling three kegs of wine annually—usually a Pouilly-Fumé, a Beaujolais-Villages, and a first-growth Beaujolais—for daily use, and supplementing these by occasional cases of fine Bordeaux and Burgundies.)

      In 1961, in love with the light, the landscape, and the odors of Provence, I bought an abandoned property near Solliès-Toucas. The house, perched halfway up a hillside, its only access from below a somewhat precarious footpath (four men and a dolly spent six hours delivering the cookstove while I spent the day running back and forth with bottles of white wine to keep up their spirits), was a total ruin. Stretching above, the several acres of stone-walled terraces planted to olive trees, once meticulously cared for, are grown wild to all those herbs—rosemary, wild thyme and savory, oregano, fennel, lavender, and mint—whose names are poetry and whose mingled perfumes scent the air of Provençal kitchens and hillsides alike.

      The definitive move south followed the construction, with the help of my brothers, James and Byron, during the summer of 1964, of the great fireplace that dominates my kitchen and, in part, the pattern of my daily life.

      In 1961, Georges Garin, having sold the Hôtel de la Croix Blanche in Nuits-Saint-Georges and having abandoned the kitchens of the Château du Clos Vougeot, opened his own restaurant, Chez Garin, in Paris. A great chef, he surpasses in his culinary knowledge anyone I have ever known, and his appetite and passion for eating are equaled only by my own. My enthusiasm for his cooking and our common passion for discussing anything culinary have cemented a friendship, generously truffled, over the years, by divine and often fantastic meals, in Paris Chez Garin, in Clamart, and in Solliès-Toucas.

      Garin’s first visit to Clamart marked the only time that I have ever been terrified by the notion of preparing a meal. To avoid the possi-bility of errors, I opted for simple preparations and fine wines:

      A COLD DISH—Artichoke Bottoms with Two Mousses

      Château Bouscaut blanc, 1959

      A RAPID SAUTE—Ortolans

      Château Grand-Mayne, 1955

      SALAD

      CHEESES

      Château Ducru-Beaucaillou, 1947

       Tepid Apple Charlotte

      Château d’Yquem, 1950

      The meal was a success.

      Madeleine Decure (who is, alas, no longer) shared with Garin the distinction of having the other most intelligent and analytic palate I have known. She was one of the two founders, in 1947, of the monthly gastronomic review Cuisine et Vins de France. The other was Curnonsky (born Maurice Sailland in Anjou), the remarkable personality who was acclaimed Prince élu des Gastronomes by a jury of professional chefs and gastronomic journalists. His eightieth birthday was celebrated by a now famous meal organized by his eighty preferred Paris restaurants, СКАЧАТЬ