Thirteen
I have eaten in restaurants all over the world, but when I come home to my kitchen, I realize it is there that I can best satisfy the eccentricities of my own palate. After endless luncheons in smart restaurants, endless tasting, endless talk about food, one inevitably develops a certain apathy toward elegant cuisine. How I have longed, after a week of rich and complicated foods, for the exquisite pleasure of a simple piece of broiled meat!
Somehow I have never minded dining alone. Instead, I find it is a rare opportunity for relaxing and collecting my senses, and I have always made each occasion something of a ceremony. A nicely set table and time—these are as important as the food. The menus I plan for myself would shock people with an Edwardian background, the seven-course-dinner set-and the nutrition experts as well. Often I order a squab chicken from the market, split and ready for the broiler. This weighs usually about a pound. I rub it with oil and butter and sometimes soy, garlic, tarragon or rosemary, according to my whim. The chicken takes about twelve minutes to broil and is completely rewarding. I like to enjoy each course by itself, so nothing is served with the chicken. Afterwards, if it is in season, I will have asparagus, either boiled quickly till tender but still crisp—and this with no embellishment save salt and freshly ground black pepper—or cut in paper-thin diagonal slices and tossed with butter and soy for two or three minutes in a hot skillet, which gives it a delightful texture.
At other times the accompanying vegetable may be a purée of parsnips, mashed yellow turnips or cabbage braised in white wine and butter. If I have potatoes, of which I am inordinately fond, there is no need for a second vegetable but perhaps some watercress or plain cherry tomatoes. And again, I may dispense with vegetables and have a salad dressed with olive oil and vinegar—Bibb lettuce, romaine, or endive, or a combination of these.
For a final course I am likely to serve myself fruit in some form—a fresh pear, maybe with cheese; berries, when they are good; sliced oranges with a touch of Grand Marnier and powdered sugar; mangoes or lichee nuts when they are in season; or a ripe melon. Occasionally a good cheese follows, but not too often, and from time to time there is a bottle of wine or a glass of beer, which I feel complements certain dishes nicely.
I am not always eating squab chicken, of course, and the main course varies according to my appetite. Sometimes I find myself wanting veal kidneys more than anything in the world, roasted in their fat, then sliced, flambéed with cognac and eaten with salt and freshly ground black pepper; or a tiny squab, broiled or roasted; or a flank steak rubbed with soy, sherry and garlic, broiled blue-rare and sliced thin—blissful eating, because for my palate the flank, in the realm of beef, is the kindest cut of all.
One of my greatest pleasures is having six or eight people to dinner and serving a simple but elegant menu with carefully chosen wines and handsome table appointments. I usually do a modest first course and a main course, followed by cheese—usually no salad is served—and a dessert. The meal is accompanied by two wines, sometimes after champagne has been served as an apéritif. These events are relaxed and casual, for I’m afraid I am not fond of formal entertaining.
I try to establish a theme in the menu, and if I happen to be entertaining friends from abroad I feature dishes they do not have in their own countries. Last year, for example, I had two friends from England to dinner who wished to sample the best of American beef. After a first course of razor clam bisque, made from the canned clams from Oregon and heavy cream, I served some succulent, grilled beef with tiny braised new potatoes and tiny French peas, which are now sold frozen with butter in bags, and delicious they are. The dessert was a skillet soufflé—just eggs, sugar and liqueur turned out of the skillet and flambéed at table—delicate in flavor, light in texture and a perfect ending for such a dinner. That night four of us drank a jeroboam of Pommard while we lingered at the table.
On another occasion when I had English guests, I served them Grammie Hamblet’s deviled crab and then a baron of baby lamb with an anchovy and garlic sauce, leeks Provençal and potatoes Anna. Next came cheese, which was perfectly aged, followed by a superb fresh raspberry frozen mousse. We sat at table from eight-fifteen until twelve-thirty—eight of us—enjoyed stimulating conversation and drank a Chassagne Montrachet and a Château Pichon Longueville. Cognac, a bottle of chilled Mirabelle and a sampling of a new tea liqueur accompanied coffee.
When I am experimenting with new dishes, I frequently have two or three old friends in to taste with me. Whether the dish is successful or not makes little difference in their pleasure, for people enjoy being behind the scenes of my profession and are usually fair and constructive critics. I recall one evening recently when I tried out a new kidney dish, which received a favorable reaction, a shrimp dish with a most unusual Oriental sauce, which turned out to be a major discovery, and a dessert which was pretty bad, though edible. Thus the experiment ended with a score of two to one in my favor.
I have vivid memories of the period when Helen Brown, her husband Philip and I were making tests for the book Helen and I did together, The Complete Book of Outdoor Cookery. We spent almost three months over the grill and invited all our friends in to feast with us.
Naturally, in the course of my work, I must entertain a great deal and on a larger scale than the intimate type of feasting I have just recounted. I enjoy having many people around me and often have a buffet for thirty or forty in my rather small house (although it is large compared to the one-room apartment I lived in for sixteen years, where I dispensed food to as many as twenty guests at a time, working in a kitchen the size of a closet). The physical arrangement of this house is perfect for large parties, however. The horseshoe-shaped construction in the center of my huge kitchen—I call this my grand piano—has Formica covers designed for it which fit over the cooking units, and thus the entire setup is converted into an ideal buffet, providing space for someone to work within the horseshoe, if need be. Tables are set in the kitchen, the living room and sometimes upstairs in my bed-sitting room if it is an exceptionally large gathering. I like to serve the first course at table because so many people make such a mess of buffet plates.
This course often consists of small ramekins of cheese or deviled crab or shrimp, with a sauce of nuts, Pernod, garlic and oil, served in small shell dishes. When the dishes for this course are cleared, the buffet is ready for the main course—never more than one meat dish and usually a vegetable and a relish or a salad. I abhor plates piled with a conglomeration of food, so I provide plenty but limit the variety. The main dish might be a cassoulet, for example, with a salad that can be eaten with the fingers. Or it might be a boiled boned leg of lamb with a brisk Provençal sauce and a rice dish. At times I do a Mexican dinner with some inventions of my own—seviche to start with, and guacamole, followed by a dish of pork and veal, with a sauce of chiles, nuts, sesame seed and a bit of chocolate as thickening (in effect, a combination of a chile dish and a mole). Frijoles with cognac and sour cream accompany this, together with tortillas—sometimes giant ones of wheat toasted in the oven. And still another favorite buffet dish of mine is an enormous choucroute gamie, containing five or six kinds of sausage, thin slices of ham, and sauerkraut cooked in champagne or white wine. With this go boiled potatoes and a cucumber salad or a crisp and pungent onion salad. Good wine in generous quantity is served with these buffets, as well as the best bread I can find—usually French or Italian.
I like to linger over a meal and believe others do too, so I allow a lot of time between courses. After the main course is over and the tables are cleared, a cheese board is passed and sometimes another wine. I shop for two or three varieties of cheese in their prime and serve them with bread, crackers and biscuits and butter. Nothing seems to stimulate more comment in my house than a good cheese. After cheese comes a simple dessert—fruit with a liqueur, a mousse, or homemade ice cream or water ice. A coffee mousse is one favorite and another is fresh preserved-pineapple water ice. Sometimes the dessert is nothing more than delicious petits fours served with coffee, liqueurs and cognac.
Planning such dinner parties so that served courses are alternated with buffet courses does away with a great deal of the mess of an unattended buffet and still permits an air of informality. For a large party I have two or three people to assist me and do some serving myself.
Frequently I do a cocktail buffet, which is neither buffet nor cocktail party. For this sort of affair I sometimes have as many as seventy guests. Occasionally the potable is champagne, sometimes sherry, and at other times mixed drinks, and I prepare three or four substantial dishes to be eaten throughout the party. I say substantial because my conception of entertaining at cocktails has changed completely since the days of Hors d’Oeuvre, Inc. No longer do I worry about having hundreds of little bits and pieces of food, trying to be original with them. I loathe the precious tidbits that are passed on trays at so many parties. These little creations are messy to handle and are either so tailored or so fancy that they cannot possibly intrigue anyone with good taste—and the more decorated the doots are, the more they revolt me.
Nor do I turn people out in the dinner hour half full of food and quite filled with alcohol. I now ask guests for six-thirty or seven and let them know there will be ample food—enough so they can forego a dinner later on.
I frequently have a large roast beef, just warm so that it slices paper-thin, together with a variety of breads and several mustard combinations, including one of Dijon, English and German mustards blended with fine-chopped gherkins, which seems to be exceedingly popular. Sometimes I make a great pâté de campagne or a pâté en croute, and with it serve vegetables—essential for any party—and a tapenade.
The tapenade is a Provençal dish, which varies from town to town in Provence just as salade Niçoise does from section to section. It should be pounded in a mortar, unless you are fortunate enough to have a blender.
If you use a blender, blend a little olive oil, together with the oil from the anchovies and tuna, with 14 anchovy fillets, a small tin of tuna (or half a 7-ounce tin), and 2 cloves of garlic. Set aside this mixture, and pit 2 dozen of the soft black olives (Italian, Greek or French); blend them with ¼ cup brandy, 1 tablespoon capers, and a little more olive oil. Combine the fish and olive mixtures, and taste for seasoning. This is best if it stands a day before using. You may vary the amounts of each ingredient to suit your own taste. I know spots in Provence where the tapenade is quite black and other places where it is rather a mustard color. It is extremely good with bread and raw vegetables, and it can also be used with eggs in a salad or as a sauce for an hors d’oeuvre of eggs mollet. Under refrigeration, it will keep in a jar for some time.
Recently I entertained seventy guests at a cocktail buffet, and for this I prepared a huge pâté de campagne with pistachio nuts, tongue and all manner of things in it; an even larger Virginia ham glazed with apricot; and two giant garlic sausages, which I poached in the oven for two hours before slicing and serving with very thin pieces of French bread.
For a gathering of this size I very often serve whole rare filets of beef, marinated in soy, sherry, garlic and olive oil and roasted for twenty-five minutes. Another good meat dish is perfectly cooked corned beef, sliced and served with mustards and raw vegetables. You have no idea how popular this is.
At other times I offer an enormous platter of all sorts of smoked fish, with onions, cream cheese, and breads; and also, perhaps, thin, well-filled chicken sandwiches and a few vegetables. Or I gather together in a great basket every type of sausage I can find in New York—and the number is rather large—which can be carved as people choose. Rolls, bread, wonderful pickles, and a huge cheese board make this the easiest and often the best way of all to entertain at cocktails for people you know well. And then there are occasions when I serve a ham and perhaps a ballotine of duck or chicken.
For one of the best parties I ever did I made huge, wonderful hamburgers and frankfurters and a very special chili.
Chili
Sauté 4 fine-chopped large onions and 4 fine-chopped garlic cloves in ¼ pound beef suet. Add 3 pounds fine-ground lean beef (round steak is best) and brown it quickly. Add 1 teaspoon oregano, ⅓ to ½ cup chili powder, 2 dashes of Tabasco sauce, 3 tablespoons tomato paste, and 1½ cups beer. Cover, and simmer the chili for 45 minutes. Uncover and correct the seasoning, adding more liquid if necessary. Cook the chili down for another 15 minutes. Add fine-chopped parsley or fresh coriander.
This is better made the day before and reheated. It may be varied by the addition of whole-kernel corn during the last 15 minutes of cooking, or ground peanuts or almonds. I sometimes serve toasted almonds with it.
I use this chili as a sauce for the frankfurters and hamburgers and have bowls of chopped green chiles and chopped onion and chopped peanuts at hand for those who want them. Naturally plates and napkins are in order for this dish.
None of the dishes I have mentioned entails a serving problem, and if you want, you can even ask a good restaurateur to do the beef for you. As a rule, beef trimmed for the restaurant trade is best for carving, and a “whole rib,” as they call it, will give you a few meals after the party. You can send someone for it as soon as it comes from the restaurant oven, and it will be perfect for your party when it arrives. Do not refrigerate it, for you want the feeble warmth to hold the crispness of the outside surface.
Good Virginia hams and country hams from various sources around the country can be bought ready to eat and are easily shipped. They are a great boon to any cocktail party, for they stretch wonderfully well if carved properly.
In addition to such hearty fare as the meat dishes, I generally provide a large tray of hard cheeses—Emmenthal and Gruyère from Switzerland, Cheddar, and Cantal from France—together with a few dishes of nuts, placed here and there for those who can’t seem to drink without them.
Whenever I do a cocktail buffet, I usually have a tray of coffee and cognac brought out around nine o’clock as a hint that the party is over. The guests are usually very content by then. It is surprising how much more pleasant this type of cocktail party is than the old, familiar ones. Even the host has a better time.
It goes without saying that the appeal of food is greatly heightened by the way it is served, by the dishes and color used with it. While I am not basically an exponent of the piéce montée school of presentation, I like food to look smart and appetizing when it reaches the table. For that reason I have collected pieces of serving china and porcelain from all quarters of the globe. These have unusual shapes and glazes, and so I have a houseful of what some people might call horrors and others might consider amusing whimseys. Nothing is quite so dull in my mind as the traditional set of dishes, paraded doggedly through course after course. And in my opinion an unusual plate provides an interesting enough background for food to obviate such decorations as the little orange cup, the lemon frill or the fluted mushroom—and I loathe, with few exceptions, pastry tube decorations on platters of food.
To entertain successfully, one must first of all pay attention to his cookery, but food should look as well as taste good. Then be certain to provide good wines. Have comfortable chairs at the table. Gather around you guests who are stimulating to you and who will amuse each other. Put on a fine show! Like the theater, offering food and hospitality to people is a matter of showmanship, and no matter how simple the performance, unless you do it well, with love and originality, you have a flop on your hands.
Whether you are serving one person or a hundred, entertaining at a dinner or cocktail party should be a pleasure, not a chore. I often think of my mother’s remarkable ability to put guests at ease, which must also have accounted for her success in business. She could make the most insignificant person feel important, and whether she was presiding at the tea table in her own house with twelve ladies she didn’t particularly like or directing a beach supper for forty friends, she had the graciousness that marks a successful hostess. She was never very formal in her entertaining, and her uninhibited style may sometimes have been thought shocking. But no one left our house without feeling happier.
There was something about sitting over a cup of morning tea or “elevenses” with Elizabeth Beard which made it a special occasion. And when childhood friends came to dinner with me they would soon fall under her spell, respond to her warmth and find themselves talking about their problems without shyness. Even when Mother offered you nothing but cold meat and homemade bread at the kitchen table, she served it with flair, and you felt she was doing it with thought and love for no one but you.
I can remember Mother’s pointing out a woman to me one day and saying scornfully, “She has no right to those airs. She doesn’t know a thing about a home and less about food! She’s clothes-crazy.”
More and more I think about Mother’s small wood stove at Gearhart and the dishes that issued from the tiny kitchen. I still wonder at her technique. She could even do popovers in that stove, and without iron pans. Her hand was her infallible oven gauge, and I often wonder what she would think about our oven and meat thermometers and our myriad gadgets and electric appliances. It would amuse me to see Mother and Let confronted by my kitchen with its rather laboratorial battery of ovens and burners, controls and timers. Mother would probably scorn the whole affair!
I remember how quickly she would start a fire on the beach with fine kindling, adding split wood and then bits of bark. In no time she would have breakfast going. And it was even more incredible to see her produce dinner or lunch for six to eight people from her trusty wood stove. Those busy days on the Oregon coast left their mark on me, and no place on earth, with the exception of Paris, has done as much to influence my professional life.
In the spring at Gearhart, when the meadows were purple with violets and bluebells and the woods filled with new skunk cabbages and the first shoots of ferns, life was at its most tranquil. One could wander alone for hours on the beach, gaze at Tillamook Head and watch the surf. Only last spring I spent a weekend there with two old friends, and we did these same things—only instead of walking, we drove in a jeep!—going far up the beach to the jetty, searching for the Japanese floats we remembered from our youth. At night, when it was raining and blowing slightly, we went out once more in the jeep and drove along the beach, reminiscing about berrying, clamming, picnicking. Then we parked and sat a long while in silence, looking at the surf, longing for the floats to come tumbling in.
Lausanne, 1961
New York, 1962
St. Rémy-de-Provence, 1963
