6 eggs, separated
1 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar
cup pear brandy
10 ounces best-quality white chocolate, chopped or broken into small pieces
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 cups heavy cream
Mint sprigs and fresh berries for garnish
………
PANTHEON, 2002
(available in paperback from Anchor, 2003)
JULIA GLASS’S debut novel is an exploration of family dynamics. How do families communicate? How do the complexities of sibling relationships play out over time? How do coincidences bring family and friends together—or divide them? Does family hinder or help when we struggle to cope with our most profound losses and regrets? Three Junes traces the lives of the McLeod family in three distinctive settings in the month of June over a decade.
In the first, the patriarch, Scottish widower Paul McLeod, travels to Greece, where he reflects on his troubled marriage to a woman he once adored. There, a young American artist, Fern Olitsky, captivates him. Six years later Paul’s sons—Fenno, a gay bookstore owner in Manhattan, and twins David, a veterinarian, and Dennis, a chef in the South of France—come together at the family home in Scotland for Paul’s funeral. The third setting is New York’s Long Island shore, where an impromptu dinner party brings Fenno and Fern together.
In the second June, when the McLeod brothers reunite for their father’s funeral, Dennis dominates the kitchen, nurturing his family with delicious and elaborate meals. For his brother Fenno, the novel’s main protagonist, Dennis’s cooking changes the entire atmosphere of their home, filling it with “extravagant odors” and suffusing it with warmth.
Because the house never smelled like this when we were small—because our mother, though she made a dependable joint, spent as little time indoors as possible—this has transformed my homecoming for the past several years. I feel as if I’m visiting a home in a dream. Where everything yet nothing is the way it should be, where the best of what you have and what you wish for are briefly, tantalizingly united.
Julia Glass suggested several exquisite desserts from her novel for our Three Junes recipe selections. She also has a passion for soufflés and mousses—and apparently for white chocolate. When Dennis meets Mal, a friend of Fenno’s, he offers to make dessert, giving Mal a choice of three chocolate soufflés, one of them made with white chocolate. In another scene, Fenno describes Dennis’s white chocolate mousse as “worthy of a dinner on Mount Olympus.”
For a recent New Year’s Eve feast, Julia Glass made the White Chocolate and Pear Mousse from Nantucket Open-House Cookbook by Sara Leah Chase (Workman, 1987). “It’s the best dessert I’ve ever made,” says Glass. We adapted Chase’s recipe to create a pure white chocolate mousse, similar to the one Dennis serves.
6 eggs, separated 1 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar
10 ounces best-quality white chocolate, chopped or broken into small pieces |
4 tablespoons unsalted butter 2 cups heavy cream Mint sprigs and fresh berries for garnish |
Combine the egg yolks, sugar, and pear brandy in a small mixing bowl. Beat with an electric mixer on high speed until the eggs become light yellow, about 5 minutes (the mixture should fall in ribbons when beaters are lifted). Transfer to the top of a double boiler over simmering water or place the mixing bowl in a saucepan of simmering water. Heat, whisking constantly, until quite thick, 4–5 minutes. Transfer to a large mixing bowl and set aside.
Melt the chocolate and butter in a saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly until smooth. Remove from heat and add the chocolate to the egg mixture, stirring until smooth. Let cool to room temperature.
Meanwhile, in a chilled bowl beat the heavy cream until quite stiff. Wash and dry beaters. Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form but mixture is not dry. Fold the egg whites into the chocolate mixture, then gently fold in the whipped cream.
Spoon the mousse into 8 large wine goblets or other dessert glasses. Place in refrigerator and chill until set, at least 2–3 hours. Garnish with mint sprigs and fresh berries before serving.
Yield: 8 to 10 servings
Frozen lime custard caps off the first meal Dennis prepares for his siblings after their father’s death. “Lime is one of my favorite flavors in the entire world,” Julia Glass told us. “I’m crazy about margaritas, Key lime pie, and those delicious Thai soups that include lime juice. I can’t think of any food with lime I don’t adore.” Glass suggested a recipe for lime soufflé for The Book Club Cookbook, and Greg Case, a pastry chef and owner of G. Case Baking in Somerville, Massachusetts, was happy to share his recipe, a sublime creation.
1½ teaspoons unflavored gelatin 1 cup fresh lime juice Grated peel of 6 lemons 6 eggs, separated |
1¼ cups sugar, divided in half 2 cups heavy cream Chopped pistachio nuts or Raspberry Sauce for topping (see below) |
Combine the gelatin, lime juice, and lemon peel in the top of a double boiler. Allow to set 5 minutes before heating. Heat to dissolve gelatin; the mixture should be smooth, not granular. Remove from heat and set aside to cool completely.
Beat the egg yolks with half the sugar until thick, about 5 minutes. Fold into the cooled lime mixture.
Beat the egg whites until frothy. Gradually add the remaining sugar, beating continually, until stiff peaks form. Fold into the lime mixture.
Beat the heavy cream until soft peaks form. Fold into the lime mixture. Ladle the mixture into individual ring molds or ramekins (allow about ¾ cup per serving). Freeze for 4 hours or overnight.
To serve, dip molds in hot water for several seconds to soften. Run a knife around the inside edge and turn onto a serving plate. Garnish with pistachio nuts or top with Raspberry Sauce.
Yield: Eight 6-ounce servings
1 pint fresh raspberries, or 8 ounces frozen raspberries, thawed |
2 teaspoons lemon juice 2–3 tablespoons sugar |
Purée raspberries, lemon juice, and sugar in food processor and pass through fine sieve or strainer.
TZATZIKI
When Dennis visits his widowed father in Greece, he teaches him to make a few dishes for a dinner party, including tzatziki, a Greek cucumber-and-yogurt dish, which can be served as a dip for pita bread or vegetables or as a side dish to complement grilled fish or meat. To add a taste of Greece to your Three Junes discussion, serve our recipe for tzatziki, p. 265.
Julia Glass offered this meditation on food, fiction, and the culinary perquisites of a writer’s life for The Book Club Cookbook.
A few years ago, while I was visiting Chicago, a friend took me out of the city to an event at one of those world-in-an-oyster bookshops, Town House Books in Saint Charles, Illinois. The shop occupies a creaky antique house along with an adjoining café, and the event we attended was a dinner to celebrate the publication of a bestiary created by a woman who was an artist, poet, and singer. We ate a down-home southern dinner (chicken and biscuits), and then she talked about the book and showed her prints, even sang a little. I had just finished writing my first novel, and I remember thinking, If it’s ever published, I want an evening just like this. A grandiose wish I kept to myself.
Over the next year and a half, a great deal happened in my life, things both terrible and wonderful: cancer, chemotherapy, an attack on my city … yet also the birth of my second son and, finally, the publication of my novel. I went on tour to half a dozen cities, and I was treated to some fine evenings in a fine variety of bookshops, but none quite like that delicious evening in Saint Charles.
I adore food, and I do not take for granted the privilege of being well and diversely fed. As a New Yorker, I revere restaurants—some simple, some elegant—the way so many other people revere museums, tall buildings, and operas. I love restaurants almost as much as I love bookstores. Mostly, however, I eat in, so I love reading recipes, and as much as I enjoy cooking (rarely anything fancy), I like feeding people even more. A splendid dinner party can move you as deeply as a splendid novel; in the right company, a good meal can open up a soul. I also find enormous pleasure in the culinary lexicon: words like souvlaki, tapenade, carpaccio, farfalle, paella, oshitashi, Reine de Saba. From Gewürztraminer to Maytag blue, pronouncing such words is almost as delightful as tasting what they represent. (Did I say how much I like eating?)
Inescapably, my fiction is full of food. It doesn’t matter whether or not I’m hungry while I’m writing; reveries of things to eat drift in and out of my imagination along with reveries of character and setting. In Three Junes, rather shamelessly, I just went right ahead and made one of my principal characters, Dennis McLeod, a chef. At one point, he prepares a luncheon for dozens of people who gather after his father’s death, and I remember writing about that food, because I remember faking it all. Dennis claims to make his vichyssoise with buttermilk, garlic, and nutmeg. He soaks figs in red wine for a chicken tajine; he poaches peaches in crème de cassis and lavender. But did the author test these recipes? Never. This was food designed for the delectation of the mind, never intended to leave the page. (“Don’t try this at home,” I might have joked in a footnote.)
The year after Three Junes was published, the book and I had many adventures; it was a year of good fortune (and, I should add, good eating). And then, for the paperback, another tour was planned. This time the tour included Chicago, and so—because all that good fortune gave me the hubris to do it—I wrote to the owner of Town House Books and asked if he would like to host a reading. Graciously, he said yes.
Just before I left for the Midwest, my publicist sent me an e-mail telling me how excited she was about this event; she had just heard from Town House that (as I had hoped) they planned to make it a dinner and—get this!—to re-create Dennis McLeod’s menu from the funeral luncheon. Well, I panicked: That poor chef out in Saint Charles had no idea my food was all phony! Nutmeg and leeks? Peaches and lavender? Make-believe, every bit of it! And then I thought, But wait, he’s a chef. A lucky man whose job is food.
And that is how I came to have a positively Alice in Wonderland evening, nothing short of intoxicating, in which I got to taste my very own fiction—with, of course, the creative license involved in all translations. Together, the owner of the bookstore and the chef concocted a vichyssoise with garlic and nutmeg; their tajine was composed of chicken and fruit of various kinds; and they did not omit Dennis McLeod’s palate-freshening salad of greens. The dessert they invented was a peach pie in two sauces: raspberry (they apologized for skipping cassis) and a crème anglaise infused with lavender. It was something else. We ate every bit of it, we talked and laughed and drank wine, and then I read from my book. I stood up before a crowd of happily sated readers under the comforting beams of that fine old creaky house and I thought, You need not always be careful what you wish for.
NOVEL THOUGHTS
As book club adviser at the Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver, Elinor Hellis gives talks about the classics and modern books, arranges book club seminars, and recommends reading selections to book clubs that patronize the Tattered Cover Book Store.
Hellis’s own book club members are women who met through the homeowner’s association in Denver’s Cherry Creek area.
She finds the relaxed atmosphere of her book club a welcome change from her role as a book club adviser. Hellis believes most readers crave books that elicit an emotional connection with the characters. “Three Junes makes an excellent book club choice because of its emotional realism,” says Hellis. “It’s about families that share fears and secrets and a strong need to connect with one another.”
Members of Hellis’s group responded to Glass’s portrayal of family interactions where much is left unsaid. “Even when we feel most alienated from family or love, those powerful family ties remain,” says Hellis. “At the same time, sometimes the defining relationships in our lives, the ones that matter, are entered into almost haphazardly.”
Hellis’s group admired Glass’s skill at creating empathy for her characters. “The main character, Fenno, is idealistic and decent yet scared, and this makes him so affecting,” says Hellis. “Glass also writes scenes where we empathize with the human need to relate to powerful, painful events. When the father, Paul, visits the scene of the Lockerbie plane crash, he takes a lipstick from the wreckage. The humanization of this major disaster was deeply touching.”
The LunaChics Literary Guild of Tallahassee, Florida, enjoyed a Three Junes meal that captured the spirit—and the flavors—of the book. Hostess Jan Keshen served vichyssoise, a green salad with fresh mushrooms and herbs, and French cheese, all “in keeping with the French feel of the oft-mentioned cuisine.” For dessert, Keshen served her own “morsels of divinity”: a berry-mascarpone tart with a chocolate crumb crust, and a peach tarte Tatin. “There were lots of oohs and aahs at the table that night,” says Keshen. “We felt that the lushness of our meal echoed the richness of the food and the prose in Three Junes.”
