| LYNDSAY FAYE |
“Scotch and soda,” I said, “lemon chicken, and thou.”
—Spenser to Susan, Hundred-Dollar Baby
ROBERT B. PARKER’S iconic Boston private detective Spenser is a true gourmet not only in that he creates and appreciates fine food, but in that he understands the fundamental principle of eating: food is about love. Having worked in restaurants from suburban chains to Park Avenue flagships, immersed in the culture that accompanies food enthusiasm, it has become clear to me that gastronomes exist in many incarnations, and some of them fail to follow this precept.
The chef de cuisine of BLT Steak (a talented fellow who was selected by Laurent Tourondel and remains the creator of the best Chinese five-spice rubbed duck breast I’ve ever eaten) once remarked to me that there is a difference between people who collect experiences at trendy restaurants for trophies, consuming delicacies like sea urchin and bone marrow simply for bragging rights, and people who instead want the shared communion of a memorable meal (at which sea urchin and bone marrow could certainly appear). “Foodies” are frequently charged with pretension and elitism, and often rightfully so, but in my opinion exclusivity is the exact antithesis of truly fine dining. When food is about love, then food matters, and loving food is elevated from a hobby some might call absurdly self-indulgent to a lifestyle that celebrates our time on the planet and with each other. Without doubt, Spenser falls into the latter category, and his attitude toward food thus becomes one of his most endearing character traits.
Previous to Spenser, food could not have been pegged as any sort of defining interest in the life of many private detectives (Nero Wolfe being a notable exception), in part because private detectives were such lone wolves as to be positively anti-domestic. To name but a few examples, Sherlock Holmes’ attitude towards food is to avoid it entirely—though admittedly he is capable of appreciating a brace of woodcock or a good Scots breakfast on those rare occasions when he is neither the victim of ennui nor of near-manic brainwork, and once planned so far ahead as to shove a sandwich in his trouser pocket. God forbid, however, that any Victorian gentleman be called upon to cook his own meal.
Philip Marlowe will deign to eat food, but the allure of repast offers only a pale shadow of the comfort that he finds in occasional swigs of neat liquor and, more importantly, in his ever-present cigarettes. Although Sam Spade is perfectly willing to consume lunch and dinner, in such establishments as Herbert’s Grill on Powell Street or the Palace Hotel on Geary, he is seldom interested enough in the fare to report what he actually ordered, whether it was any good, or why. Pickled pigs’ feet make an appearance to represent bar fare, as do scrambled eggs with bacon, toast, and marmalade in a more domestic setting, but they are incidental items and in no way does eating them affect Spade. All three detectives eat for utility and remain entirely disengaged from the act of dining itself.
By contrast, Spenser’s entire outlook can be shifted by means of a perfectly rendered snack. In Hugger Mugger, for instance, he remarks, “The donuts were everything donuts should be, and the bright beginning of the day contained the prospect of unlimited possibility.” It is difficult to imagine Spade evincing the same emotional reaction to a pig’s foot. But it is equally difficult to imagine Sam Spade as blissfully contented in love, or to conceive of Philip Marlowe finding an untroubled domestic arrangement, or to imagine Sherlock Holmes going within ten feet of any female whosoever. Spenser’s relationship with food differs from Holmes’, Marlowe’s, and Spade’s because he is a different man than they are: a man possessed of warm and, at times, even uncomplicated domestic ties.
The warmth so evident in Spenser’s makeup is of course primarily devoted to Susan Silverman. As Spenser’s longtime friend Hawk remarks in Now and Then, “You love her . . . More than I ever seen anybody love anything.” The mere fact of Spenser’s commitment to a passionate and monogamous affair with an intelligent, wry, capable female forever altered the landscape of hardboiled detective fiction. Whether the romantic interludes are to the tastes of the more cynical readers of dark crime fiction is debatable, but surely no one doubts that Spenser’s love life adds a great many human facets to the ex-boxer and ex–state trooper tough guy.
Spenser’s own opinion of his relationship with Susan is that their differences wholly complement one another despite the fact that they are not alike. In Painted Ladies, he muses, “What we had in common was that we loved each other. What was different was everything else. She could feel deeply and think deeply, but she tended to rely more on the thinking. I was probably inclined somewhat the other way.” In Crimson Joy, he goes so far as to say to Susan, “It’s not only that I love you. You complete my every shortfall.” It is impossible to imagine words of this tenor emerging from the mouths of Holmes, Marlowe, or Spade, and I would equally argue that it is this quality of completion that defines Spenser as a food-lover. He is no aloof iconoclast, divorced from humanity’s softer emotions save for a friendship with an army doctor and occasional violin rhapsodies. Neither is he a hard-drinking PI roaming the mean streets without so much as a secretary as ally, nor a “hard and shifty fellow” destined to break the hearts of femme fatales. Rather, Spenser is a spiritually open man deeply invested in family life, and from the moment of falling in love with Susan, he gains the perfect audience for his forays into the heights of culinary exertion. The meals he creates for her are, in the truest sense, a series of love letters. When Spenser is most engaged emotionally, it is with Susan, and when he engages most deeply with food, it is in the context of their relationship.
Food for Spenser is an art, but it is a refreshingly unpretentious art, and he prefers to practice his hobby at home, hands-on, than to indulge himself at chic establishments. In Painted Ladies, Spenser says, “We sat at the bar. The Harvest was a bit elegant for the likes of me. I was probably the only guy in the place wearing a gun. I asked for a beer.” While pork tenderloin en croute (featured in God Save the Child) is a Spenser effort so delicate, tricky, and time-consuming that I would never dream of serving it save for a dinner party of my closest friends and relations, he also makes johnnycakes (in Ceremony), a cornmeal and water pancake concoction that is so old-timey and simple that Civil War soldiers would have eaten it within camp when they could get their hands on the flour.
Spenser also has a sense of humor about food, an ironic perspective less smug than the wit he wields against antagonists; more good-natured. In Chance, he reports, “I ordered something called a Roman salad. I didn’t know what it was, but Vegas was very taken with ancient Rome, and I wanted to be with it.” The aforementioned salad turns out to be a normal green dinner salad with the improbable elements of green olives and artichoke hearts added in, as Spenser informs us in a dryly distant fashion. And thus we are made aware that food is not about hat tricks for him, posh ingredients dressed up to look like special effects. Spenser is not a “foodie” in the trophy-hunting sense; Spenser is, instead, a lover of food. The distinction is an important one.
The food Spenser makes himself, often for Susan, has soul. The venison chops marinated in red wine and rosemary he creates for her at the end of Chance are served alongside yellow-eye beans baked in an “old-fashioned brown and tan” pot, as well as classic cornbread and bread pudding with whiskey sauce. That the food is for Susan matters, but that the beans are cooked in an old-fashioned pot matters, too. Kitchen equipment, in particular non-electronic items like casserole dishes, cast iron skillets, and pots, acquire profound character by means of their past achievements, imparting flavor and an indefinable spirit of legacy to otherwise humble dishes. When a cooking vessel has a history, it will produce superior food. I have no doubt that Spenser’s recipe for yellow-eye beans elevated the humble bean to the level of a gorgeous venison accompaniment, and I hope that bacon was involved somehow, but I also appreciate the fact that he understands that beans baked in an old pot are better. Cornbread baked in my grandmother’s cast iron skillet is also better, and though Spenser’s cornbread technique is unrecorded other than with the note that a “pan” is used, my hope is that it was a venerable pan, and worthy of association with the old-fashioned brown and tan pot. Were I making yellow-eye beans for dinner tonight, I would employ the much-used purple Le Creuset casserole pot that one of my closest friends left at my house after a recent barbecue for which she made dirty rice, and I’d ask her over to eat them. I would do this because food is about relationships, and I think that Spenser, if I chatted with him about it, would agree with me.
When I’ve cooked at home, I have made everything from Thai curry staples to garlic scape risotto with poached egg to rabbit carnitas over carrot mint puree, but these concoctions must inevitably be for someone. Alone, when my husband is working and I am writing, my most often repeated dinners include: tinned sardines with crackers; corn tortillas warmed in a pan with grated cheddar and slices of pickled jalapeno; that timelessly delectable classic, Top Ramen, with the addition of fresh pepper and a liberal dash of sesame oil; and leftovers, always eaten straight from the plastic container.
Spenser likewise cooks, when he does cook, for an audience. When Spenser first cooks pork tenderloin en croute for Susan in God Save the Child, he watches her avidly during the meal. He observes, “She ate with pleasure and impeccable style,” and one wonders, had Susan been picky or critical or faddish or apathetic or whiny about food, whether their relationship would ever have gone anywhere. One has doubts.
Susan, meanwhile, finds Spenser’s proficiency in the kitchen amazing, possibly because she owns no such technical skill herself. Her function as domestic partner in the Spenser series inevitably grows to mean Primary Eater of Spenser’s Home Cooking. Of her own prowess in the kitchen, Spenser says in Hundred-Dollar Baby, “She was halfway into the preparation for some sort of chicken in a pot. As she spoke she chopped carrots on a cutting board. It was slow going and I feared for her fingers, but I was smart enough to make no comment.”
Not only is Spenser’s love of food tied up in his love of Susan, but he himself is well aware of the fact. Perhaps it is true that his appreciation of fine cuisine predates God Save the Child, in which Susan is introduced. But as is so often the case with significant others, Susan grows to be the axis of Spenser’s food hobby. In Hundred-Dollar Baby, during a stint of investigating out of town, he says, “We had been five days in New York. I was sick of room service, sick of eating out, sick of not being at home. I missed Susan.” Room service (impersonal food) and eating out (impersonal food) equals not being at home (personal food) equals missing Susan (who eats the personal food with Spenser). I have never seen a passage better illustrating the point that shared food is the best food, that when food is not domestic it is less satisfying, that the depth of emotion that the act of eating can grow to be entangled in is profound.
I don’t personally mind dining alone in New York restaurants, but I always do so at the bar, and I would never go anywhere in which my husband had expressed the smallest interest because I want the experience to be shared. Food is about family. The fact that Spenser makes this point in New York City, of all places, only drives the argument home. New York features arguably the most sophisticated food culture in the United States, and Spenser the gourmand is having none of it (despite relishing a tongue sandwich on light rye) because Susan is not there. Dining out in New York for me means finding a restaurant where my loved ones and I have never eaten, then going together and each ordering something different off the menu so that we can spend the night wildly switching plates around like the maddest of gourmet tea parties. Dining there alone is not the same. I once ate an absolutely lovely pumpkin and sage ravioli dish with amaretto biscotti crumbled all over it, in solitude and while jotting down writerly notes for a project, and found myself highly irked that the dish was so good and no one was there to taste it with me. Small wonder that Spenser wanted only to return home again.
In Rough Weather, eating at a favorite restaurant, Spenser reports, “I was having pasta with Bolognese sauce, which is what I always had. Traditions matter.” Well said, Spenser. They do indeed, and it is a significant character trait for Spenser to be untempted by a veal chop when he knows the Bolognese to be superior at that particular location, that a classic trumps a show-offy entrée, and that ritual matters at the dinner table. At the end of the day, a tried and true favorite will beat out novelty each and every time, and perhaps Spenser’s complete adherence to this principle can be paralleled with his effortless monogamy. There is no other woman save Susan for Spenser, just as there is no other entrée at Davio’s than pasta a la Bolognese. This constancy is an admirable trait in an already admirable man, a man greatly resembling his creator, and Robert B. Parker’s interweaving of personal honor into the world of food is a masterly effect.
When Parker speaks of food, it is never superfluous and seldom simply atmospheric. Rather, every aspect of Spenser’s attitude toward food laterally informs us about his attitude toward the world at large, which is of course why the author speaks of the food in the first place. The best writing is the ability to echo character within seemingly unrelated details and specifics, reflecting personality through thousands of tiny mirrors. Spenser orders Bolognese at Davio’s because he is loyal; he takes the time to squeeze fresh orange juice in Painted Ladies because he is meticulous; he orders Sterling sauvignon blanc with his paillard of chicken in Chance because he is discerning; he finds Roman salad funny in the same novel because he owns a keen wit; and he feeds Susan pork tenderloin en croute in God Save the Child because he is falling in love.
All this affection for domesticity, of course, has everything to do with Robert B. Parker himself. In a 2005 interview with Dean James and Elizabeth Foxwell, co-authors of The Robert B. Parker Companion, Parker was asked about the genesis of his departure from the typical private gumshoe as a cynical loner into a happily paired family man. Parker answered, “I am a happier man than Chandler was, and the center of my being is Joan and my sons. They are not only context. They are life. It was inevitable, I think, that I would evolve Spenser into a man with a similar center.”
Like Parker with regard to his wife, Spenser sees no possible world outside of Susan. What is rewarding about Parker’s re-orientation of the private detective’s center of gravity is that it makes Spenser no less of a relentless protagonist just because some of his discussions of cases now take place at the kitchen counter with Susan as he slices green apples into a bowl for fritters (Painted Ladies)—as opposed to, say, in the back corner of a sordid and smoky bar, in conversation with a sociopathic informant, or in a dark alley with a decaying lady of the evening. Parker understands that a man who remembers to slice his prettily crisp and tart green apples into lemon juice to prevent the browning process caused by oxidation is not feminized by the act, but rather is all the more capable for it. If you are going to make your protagonist a chef, a loving chef, a good chef, then that chef would be appalled by a brownish-colored green apple fritter. And because Spenser is respectful of the classics, he would also put nutmeg in the dredging flour, and Parker makes no apology for reporting such. He is not worried about what we will think of Spenser’s manhood, because it is never in doubt.
Spenser, when ruminating in Back Story over having killed several antagonists and pondering the moral weight of his chosen profession, concludes, “Was it worth a lot of dead guys? I did this work because I could. And maybe because I couldn’t do any other. I’d never been good at working for someone. At least this work let me live life on my terms.” Spoken as matter-of-factly as any deadly private vigilante, and better expressed than many. As an unabashed hardboiled detective, Spenser is appropriately forceful, sarcastic, and, according to Susan in Chance, one of the “hardest people I’ve ever known . . . And most of the time, you enjoy it, except when you have one of these little sentimental spasms.”
In the arena of palate, however, Spenser owns another key difference from detectives of his ilk like Marlowe and Spade, and that is his attitude toward alcohol. When Marlowe drinks highballs and takes pulls from his bottle of rye, it is far more likely to be the result of impossible situations, corrupted women, and acid thoughts than it is for simple enjoyment, and the same goes for Spade. Drinking is a part of the culture of the hardboiled detective, which is a culture with a hard and glittering edge to it, a world of dangerous men making sad and ruthless choices.
Spenser, on the other hand, drinks because he likes the taste and enjoys the sensation and wants something appropriate to pair with dinner. When he drinks, he drinks methodically and with pleasure, but never to excess. Alcohol is a gustatory diversion for him, and not a crutch to allow him to limp through the world with a recent emotional flesh wound a little more effectively. He is also highly eclectic in his choices; everything from Laphroaig to champagne to Calvados to Burgundy to beer to Bailey’s on the rocks are all considered fair game, depending on his whim and what he happens to be eating. The alcohol is a pleasant and welcome divertissement and though, like Marlowe, he keeps a bottle of liquor in his desk drawer (Irish whiskey, a fine choice), one never worries that he might put it to ill use. His steady domestic life hardly warrants the melancholy swigs from a flask so typical of the genre’s more spiritually corrosive protagonists.
The single meal that I think best characterizes Spenser’s love of food appears in Paper Doll and naturally is created for Susan. He prepares grilled buffalo tenderloin marinated in red wine and garlic with fiddlehead ferns, corn pudding, and red potatoes cooked with bay leaves.
Where to begin when discussing this hugely ambitious dinner plan? First, buffalo meat, also known as bison, resembles beef closely but cannot be cooked in the same manner and exhibits a leaner, gamier, darker flavor profile. Spenser, of course, would have known this. The white marbling of fat that one sees in cuts of ordinary beef are largely absent from buffalo, which means that cooking buffalo with a beef technique would produce dry, unpalatable meat because there are too few striations of fat to melt into the flesh while it heats.
Classically, if grilling is the desired cooking medium (which really would produce a lovely, smoky char on the bison tenderloin), it is necessary to first marinate the buffalo (as Spenser did, and aptly, too, because wine is a tenderizing agent), and then to cook it just off flame over a very low heat—either on an indoor gas grill or else on a barbecue with coals that have died down somewhat—basting frequently to retain the moisture. This would produce a gorgeous cut of meat, but it is an operation requiring meticulous care, not to mention technical knowhow and the desire to make life hard for yourself in anticipation of future reward. First Spenser must have created a marinade and soaked the meat in the fridge, probably for several hours, and then he chose to grill it, which would have required him hovering over the grill for the entire cooking time. This is not an endeavor for the faint of heart. To those who suppose he wouldn’t have bothered doing all that, my answer is that no way in hell did Spenser cook bad bison for Susan.
Let’s take the corn pudding next; a bad corn pudding is a terrible, terrible thing. A good corn pudding, however, is a fit subject to write home about. Retaining our hypothesis that Spenser would have produced a fantastic specimen, the best corn pudding is neither too heavy nor too light, tastes like the very embodied essence of sweet July corn kernels, is a gorgeous pale yellow color, is soft without being at all insipid, and includes no creative elements jarring enough to distract from the whole, though additions like jalapeno and bell pepper are often used.
Most corn pudding recipes involve one can of creamed corn, one can of corn kernels, one eight-ounce package of corn muffin mix, a beaten egg, a dollop of sour cream, etc., and can be made in about fifteen minutes. I make corn pudding every Thanksgiving, however, and have experimented with the help of a truly good recipe, and here is what Spenser might have done instead, as the man is nothing if not particular. First he would have taken three or four ears of fresh corn and grated the milk and kernels off into a bowl with a box grater (this step alone takes me about half an hour every year, as I’m doing twelve ears). Next he would have heated butter in a skillet and cooked up some celery, onion, and garlic and set that aside. He’d have separated the yolks from the whites of two eggs, whisked the yolks until frothy, stirred that in with the corn and the mirepoix and some crème fraiche, and then beat the whites into nearly a meringue and gently stirred the soft wet peaks into the rest. If he were me, he would have added a dash of cayenne and some fresh parsley and English thyme along with the seasoning, but I leave that to Spenser. He’d then have baked the pudding in the oven in a cast iron skillet, and I think he would have been very happy with the results, though they would have taken him about forty minutes longer than necessary.
Red potatoes with bay leaves are delicious, but let that pass and instead we can address the subject of fiddlehead ferns. They are among the most prized and most difficult to obtain vegetable ever to lend grace as a side dish, and the fact that Spenser wanted to cook them reveals something about the quality of grocers the man frequents. Not only are fiddle-heads only available in the Northeastern part of the country, and then only in specialty grocery stores and farmer’s markets, but they are only in season for three short weeks during the month of May, which is when Spenser would have been shopping for them.
Actually ostrich fern fronds, they are picked up by professional foragers during the very brief springtime window when they are small and tender enough to eat, and then the pickers will take only three fronds per plant so as not to damage the fern population, which accounts for the greens’ rather high price tag. Their flavor is akin to a toastier, more bitter-almond version of a very young asparagus tip, and they are absolutely exquisite. After being picked, they expire all too quickly, which means that Spenser did his shopping on the same day he cooked them. Then he would have removed any of the light chaff that remained by hand, cleaned them carefully to eliminate any microbes hidden in the tight furl, and prepared them, either in a classic Bostonian style (steamed with Hollandaise) or otherwise. Personally, I sauté them in butter with hen of the woods mushrooms, shallots, and a little garlic, and have never been disappointed by them. But regardless of his preferred fern method, think of the sheer amount of time involved when Spenser planned this meal: presumably, he did the shopping, made the marinade and trimmed the bison, assembled the corn pudding for baking, cleaned and prepped the fiddleheads, and still had the audacity to make potatoes. My hat is off to him, and doubtless Susan made this epicurean feast well worth his while, as it was all for her.
True food lovers find inspiration everywhere, and nothing tempts us like the allure of attempting a hitherto unknown dish. We crave the challenges of new landscapes no less keenly than golfers and mountain climbers, though our setting is a gastronomic one. In The Godwulf Manuscript, Spenser cooks a classic French recipe called Coquilles St. Jacques. From the instant I read this, I was hopelessly intrigued. I have never attempted this particular little number before, which is more than reason enough for me to try it, and thus I took the steps I like to imagine Spenser also takes when trying something new: I looked up several versions and then wrote my own. Spenser seems almost never to be working from a recipe, which is much to both my style and liking, but I did first want to grasp the principle of the thing. Spenser would never dream of cooking a dish improperly, despite his kitchen being so remarkably free of cookbooks and jotted down instructions. So here follows the way I would reproduce the St. Jacques sea scallops that Spenser served, though admittedly his flourishes would surely have differed from my own.
COQUILLES ST. JACQUES A LA SPENSER (serves 4)
1 pound of bay scallops
4 Tbsp. unsalted butter, divided
1 small leek, chopped fine
4 cloves garlic, chopped fine
2 Tbsp. Spanish brandy
1 cup of clam juice
½ tsp. lemon zest
8 ounces shitake mushrooms, sliced
2 Tbsp. all purpose flour
½ cup milk
½ cup heavy cream
½ cup shredded Gruyere
A pinch of nutmeg
A pinch of cayenne
2 Tbsp. fresh tarragon, minced
½ cup bread crumbs
Salt and pepper to taste
1. Take four large oven-safe ramekins and line them with butter.
2. Heat a large sauté pan with one tablespoon of butter and sweat the leeks and the garlic until soft and fragrant, about 8 minutes.
3. Add the scallops, brandy, clam juice, and lemon zest to the pan and poach the scallops, about 2–3 minutes until barely firm. Season to taste. Strain the contents over a bowl and reserve both the solids and cooking liquid.
4. Melt another tablespoon of butter in your empty pan and sauté the mushrooms, seasoning as you go, for 4 minutes or until tender. Add the mushrooms to the scallops and leeks.
5. Melt your remaining two tablespoons butter in your empty pan and cook the flour, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes, forming a roux. Whisking rapidly, add your poaching liquid and simmer until thickened, 3 minutes.
6. Stir in the milk, cream, Gruyere, nutmeg, cayenne, and tarragon, and season your sauce to taste. Continue cooking 1–2 minutes, until the sauce is fully incorporated.
7. Fold the sauce into the scallops, leeks, and mushrooms, and then divide in four ramekins, topping with bread crumbs. Crisp under the broiler for 2 minutes, until tops are golden brown.
This sounded, when I’d completed it, like a fantastic dish to me, and I was naturally eager to try it. However, I was regretfully forced to put that plan off, because my husband was working that night, and I was writing, and thus alone. Coquilles St. Jacques requires company and, like Spenser, I am much more inclined to cook for others than for only myself. I am happy to say that, when the proper day arrived and the dish was at last tested, it was entirely lovely. I can thus thank Spenser and, of course, the unforgettable Robert B. Parker for a meal that included fine fare, paired wine, and a loved one to share it with—the final essential ingredient.