"Provence, 1970"

M.F.K. Fisher is one of the most respected food authors in American history. In 1970, accompanied by her sister Norah, she revisited a number of her favorite places in France, subjects of her very successful books.

In Provence, she visited several of her friends: Julia and Paul Child, Child's coauthor Simone Beck and her husband; Child's editor Judith Jones and her husband; James Beard; and Richard Olney, another cookbook author. Visiting the Provencal homes of Julia and Paul Child and some of the others, M.F. (as she's called in the book) cooked and shared meals which continued into long evenings of conversation.

Provence, 1970 tells the history of a special moment in history through cookbooks and food authors, which is in itself an interesting thing to do. Author Luke Barr makes the claim that these key food and cookbook authors invented a new American attitude towards cuisine and cookbooks during these encounters. I'm not really convinced by his claim, which he restates often and in many ways, but never persuasively shows that the changes in American cuisine and cookbooks was in any way caused by the events he described.

I did find a lot of things to enjoy in reading the book. I especially loved that quite a bit of M.F.'s tourism described in the book took place in the exact places I visited last month. The numerous descriptions of menus, dishes, and their preparations (quoted or paraphrased from M.F. I assume) are so vivid you feel as if you are at the table with a morsel in your mouth. And my favorite section was essentially a diversion from his main point -- a chapter on memories of the first meal each of the main characters in the book had in France.

Some related books from my collection.

A unique and valuable source fed this narrative: M.F.'s own diary of her 1970-1971 trip. Barr is M.F.'s great-nephew (his grandmother Norah was the travel companion for the first part of M.F.'s trip), and a few years ago, preparing to write this book, he found the diary in a private family archive belonging to one of M.F.'s daughters. Barr's presentation of M.F.'s thoughts from the diary is augmented by material from other sources, such as Julia Child's memoir My Life in France, and Judith Jones's autobiography The Tenth Muse (both of which I've read).

My copies of some of the key cookbooks that Barr mentions.

Did American cookbooks and interest in cooking change because these authors made it change? Barr's point that excessive reverence for French cuisine was diminishing at that point, thanks in a large part to a new attitude on the part of the immensely influential and popular Julia Child. In the winter of 1970, Child and Beck had the second volume of Mastering the Art of French Cooking in press, having just worked through a massive and painful editing process with Judith Jones.

Child, though, was changing: her "aversion to snobbery was deeply ingrained, reflected in her whole persona, her slightly comic, encouraging patter on television, her no-nonsense practicality, her warmth.... Child was ready to turn the page on the retrograde attitudes and old-fashioned ideas. American food was changing and she was ready to embrace that change." (Provence, 1970, p. 133)

James Beard, who had been amazingly influential and popular himself to that point (witness: he's one of the chefs with his own postage stamp), was just about to complete a book on American cooking. Though he was in France for a stay at a weight-loss and health improvement spa, he took time off to visit with the group, and appears to have agreed with them in assessing trends in American culinary affairs.

Richard Olney, who is now only known to the most diligent of cookbook fanatics, had just published a book on classical French cooking. Barr says that though a good cookbook author, Olney was out of step with the trend -- of all these authors he's the only one completely unrepresented in my own library, which suggests how he didn't quite make it into the canon. From Olney's New York Times obituary: "Mr. Olney's most important disciple was Alice Waters, who keeps a jacketless, food-stained copy of 'Simple French Food' in the kitchen of her celebrated restaurant, Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, Calif. " (NYT, August 4, 1999)

Barr's accounts of these important authors' conversations and their inner thoughts (based on the sources I've mentioned, especially the diary) is insightful, especially with respect to their varied views on taste, style, and authenticity. His establishment of their importance in American food writing and cookbook writing is believable and useful. His description of American popular culture concerning French cuisine and modern cooking is reasonably accurate, I thought. He does present a lot of evidence that the change in these authors' views reflected an overall change in American culture coming from many sources. And though the writing in Provence, 1970 is sometimes maddeningly repetitive, it's still pretty readable.

But every one of these authors was already prepared to change before their shared time in Provence, he shows, in a way contradicting his own claim. Julia Child had clearly decided before this meeting that she would no longer co-author books with Beck. She knew that her later books would be less reverent about French food -- her next one, From Julia Child's Kitchen was indeed more relaxed, and her TV show began to include more non-French recipes. Barr himself documents that she was already planning these changes. Judith Jones, before the Provence dinners, had been trying to convince Beck to write a book of her own, though the final agreement seems to have occurred during their stay. Beard had never been that reverent anyway. And Olney was, as I said, out of step.

In sum, Provence, 1970 is a rather flawed book. However, I enjoyed it quite a bit even though I don't at all believe its central thesis is proved by the material in the book.

My favorite food memoir.

Provence, 1970 is the next selection for my culinary reading group, and I'm also looking forward to what the other group participants will have to say about it. I wrote more about M.F.K. Fisher HERE.

Culinary Stamp Collecting: Felipe Rojas-Lombardi

It's fun to explore cookbooks and authors that were popular or widely acclaimed in the past, but are now relatively forgotten. Recently, anticipating a post for today's Cookbook Wednesday, I purchased The Art of South American Cooking by Felipe Rojas-Lombardi. This book was published in 1991 and as far as I know has not been reissued. His other cookbook, on soup, is even more obscure.

The brief memoir that begins the book is interesting. Rojas-Lombardi was born in Peru to a family with origins in Chile, Germany, and Italy. He learned to cook first from his mother and paternal grandmother, who quarreled over recipes and traditions while sharing a kitchen. Though his father objected to his son's interest in cooking, Rojas-Lombardi persisted in watching and learning from the women in the kitchen. After moving to New York in 1967, Rojas-Lombardi took on some high-profile jobs, including one with James Beard. He became a US citizen in 1976.

In the introductions to the various sections of his book, Rojas-Lombardi presents bits of the history of food and agriculture in South America, especially that of the Quechua people (Incas). He enjoys and documents culinary traditions and native ingredients from all over South America. The recipes, which I haven't tried, appear to offer good combinations of flavors and culinary influences as wide-ranging as China (from 19th century immigration), North Africa (from Medieval Spanish traditions), and sub-Saharan Africa (from people who had been enslaved during the Colonial era).

This recipe from The Art of South American Cooking suggests how the author was ahead of his time.
In 1991, quinoa was a very obscure ingredient. Years later it became extremely popular.
The international Food and Agriculture Organization celebrated 2013 as the International Year of Quinoa.

The Art of South American Cooking was a posthumous publication; Rojas-Lombardi died shortly before its release. Though only 46, he had impressive accomplishments as a chef and restaurateur in New York City, including an appointment as "America's Bicentennial chef," consulting for food corporations, teaching, and lecturing. The Chicago Tribune wrote:

"Felipe Rojas-Lombardi did not invent quinoa, of course, but he gets much of the credit for introducing it to North Americans. ... he seemed to be there first on a variety of culinary fronts."

From Rojas-Lombardi's New York Times obituary:

"He became executive chef and owner of the Ballroom in 1982. ...  Tapas, the small appetizers served with sherry in Spain, were synonymous with the festive, open-hearted place. Mr. Rojas-Lombardi is credited with bringing the dining concept to America. After he was featured on a PBS series on "New York's Master Chefs," his recipes with their distinct lusty tapas were imitated both by chefs nationwide and large food manufacturers."

Rojas-Lombardi was obviously quite well-regarded in his day -- enough to be chosen for the celebrity chefs series on US postage stamps, issued in 2014. Such fame, I guess, is fleeting! I never heard of him any way except on the stamp. Some of the other philatelically honored chefs still enjoy a degree of fame, especially Julia Child; Edna Lewis, my subject last Wednesday; and James Beard, whom I'll write about in the future.

Chefs on US postage stamps: James Beard (1903-1985),
Joyce Chen (1917-1994), Julia Child (1912-2004),
Edna Lewis (1916-2006), Felipe Rojas-Lombardi (1945-1991).

It may be worth noting that until 2011, still-living people were ineligible to appear on US postage stamps. That's no longer the case, though the men and women honored here were all deceased. Here is the official USPS explanation of the choice of these particular chefs:

"The five chefs honored on the stamps ... revolutionized the nation’s understanding of food. By integrating international ingredients and recipes with American cooking techniques and influence, these chefs introduced new foods and flavors to the American culture."

With this post, I'm participating in Cookbook Wednesday, a blogging event organized by Louise at Months of Edible Celebrations.

Edna Lewis, Born April 16, 1916

My books by Edna Lewis and Toni Tipton-Marton,
whose book The Jemima Code describes many cookbooks including those of Lewis.

Edna Lewis had a long and fascinating life, from April 16, 1916 until February 6, 2006. She wrote several highly respected cookbooks, which have been re-issued quite a number of times with a variety of dust jackets. I've reproduced a few of them here, as well as the US postage stamp with her picture on it, issued in 2014.

I recently acquired my first of her books: the thirtieth anniversary edition of The Taste of Country Cooking, a memoir of her girlhood in Freetown, Virginia (published in 2006). Lewis describes events for each season of the year during her girlhood, with recipes illustrating what her family ate. Freetown, she writes "wasn't really a town. The name was adopted because the first residents had all been freed from chattel slavery and they wanted to be known as a town of Free People." Around a dozen families lived in the town; their houses stood in a circle around the house of her grandparents. (From the Introduction.)

I originally thought that I would try some of the recipes in The Taste of Country Cooking, but in the end I decided not to do so. When I read them closely, I came to the conclusion that they are deceptively simple. I suspect that they would in fact be very challenging to make as they should be. Quite a few of them require ingredients that are not easily obtained or that I don't normally use, such as lard, rabbit and other game, sorghum molasses, special types of cornmeal, and guinea fowl (which is not a chicken!).

I suspect that even the ingredients that are familiar and easily available might differ from the ones that were used in rural Virginia almost a century ago -- after all, Lewis left Freetown when she was a teen-ager. For example, I considered making her gingerbread recipe, but I doubted that I could really replicate the flavor she described. Here's her description, which I think makes clear why I find her memoir wonderfully vivid but don't think I could achieve anything similar:

"Warm gingerbread was uppermost in our minds when the sorghum cane began to ripen, because sorghum molasses was such an important ingredient in gingerbread. Sorghum is a plant that looks very much like corn, with the exception of the grain which is formed in the tassel. ... Most farmers grew a small patch of sorghum. It was harvested in the fall, tassel and leaves removed. The cane was put into a mill driven by two horses moving in a circle, clockwise, pressing out the juice as they walked around. When it was all pressed out it was poured into a large vat and cooked to a heavy, sugary syrup known as sorghum molasses.

"The aroma of the new crop filled the kitchen. There would be molasses for breakfast and gingerbread galore until the novelty wore off. ... Warm gingerbread with fresh, skimmed, heavy cream was an exotic treat after a meal of fresh pork or game on a chilly fall evening." (p. 255)

Why is Edna Lewis so important? Here's what chef Alice Waters says in the introduction to the anniversary edition of The Taste of Country Cooking, which was originally published in 1976:

"Thanks to this book, a new generation was introduced to the glories of an American tradition worthy of comparison to the most evolved cuisines on earth, a tradition of simplicity and purity and sheer deliciousness that is only possible when food tastes like what it is, from a particular place, at a particular point in time. ... Back then, most of us were more or less resigned to the industrialization of our food, the mechanization of our work, the trivialization of our play, and the atomization of our communities. But with her recipes and reminiscences, Miss Lewis was able to gently suggest another way of being, one on a human scale, in harmony with the seasons and with our fellow man." (p. xi) 

Edna Lewis's fame is highlighted in this paragraph from The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks by Toni Tipton-Martin:

"I was awed by Lewis from the first moment I saw her, some years ago at a professional meeting of registered dietitians in Los Angeles. I noticed a small crowd in the hotel lobby buzzing around a statuesque African American woman with a magnetic smile, her graying hair swept neatly into a bun worn low at the neck. I shamelessly joined the groupie gaggle, which was clamoring for autographs in the way that paparazzi scratch and claw for snapshots of superstars. The regal lady leaned in close, whispered a few words of encouragement, then signed the paperback edition of her first cookbook... As we got to know each other better, I told her about my desire to reclaim the reputation of black cooks. Her tales of achieving culinary mastery as an executive chef and champion of artistic African American cooking strengthened my resolve. She emboldened me with a precious handwritten letter and an exhortation: 'Leave no stone unturned."" (p. 133)

I chose the Edna Lewis cookbooks for this Cookbook Wednesday to celebrate her 100th birthday. I also want to call attention to the remarkable book, The Jemima Code, an important work of American cookbook history. I will write more about it in the future.

Cookbook Wednesday is a blogging event organized by Louise at Months of Edible Celebrations.

Cookbook Wednesday

"Impressionist Picnics" and Coq au Vin

For the first Cookbook Wednesday after months of inactivity, I've chosen the cookbook Impressionist Picnics by food historian Gillian Riley.

Renoir: The Luncheon of the Boating Party (1880-1881)

Riley's chapter "Auguste Renoir's Day on the River" begins with his famous painting of a luncheon along the river and the words "They took Paris with them wherever they went."

Renoir, she writes, would enjoy summer weekends on the river with his friends, including his future wife Aline Charigot (wearing a straw hat in the painting above). Riley continues:

Renoir: The Inn of Mother Anthony (1866):
the image on the page with Coq au Vin, as
mentioned in the quoted passage.

"The food was that of the new, fashionable Parisian restaurants, very different from the traditional cooking of country inns like the Auberge of Mère Antoine at Marlotte near Fontainebleau where, back in the 1860s, Renoir had painted a group of young artists in a rustic, unsophisticated setting. A familiar lament was already becoming heard in the land for those unspoilt little places now ruined by trippers, where simple food and a glass of the patron's wine were being replaced by sophisticated menus and décors." (page 17)

Impressionist Picnics is mainly interesting for the images of paintings and the artists' biographic details it offers. However, it does contain recipes, and I chose to make Riley's recipe for Coq au Vin as it appears in the Renoir chapter. When planning how to make the dish, I also checked the Julia Child version of this classic in my much-used copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. You can find the recipe online here courtesy of WGBH, the TV station that originally ran "The French Chef" beginning over 50 years ago.

Though Riley's recipe is much more sketchy than Julia Child's, she did make one very useful suggestion, which is to make a red-wine-based stock prior to cooking the chicken, and thus perform the time-consuming reduction of liquid before cooking rather than at the last minute. Riley also suggests a shorter way to prepare the onions; however, I used a bag of frozen pearl onions, which I simply heated in butter until they were golden brown, an even more total shortcut!

No matter how you make coq au vin, it's a labor-intensive dish involving several pots and pans and a lot of time. My total time was something like 3 hours. I began by cutting up a whole chicken. I simmered the backs, wing tips, etc. along with some aromatic vegetables, herb stems, water, and half a bottle of red wine as directed. Then reduced that stock. And this is the quick way.

After frying pancetta in the pan, one sets the crisp bits aside and
continues by frying chicken parts in the same pan.

My separately browned mushrooms and onions here waiting in the pan
until it's time to add them to the sauce. Green peas are a side dish
allowed by Julia Child.

Green peas, parsley potatoes, French bread, and coq au vin, on the table ready to eat. One bottle of wine goes into the dish;
another bottle is for drinking. Yes, really, a whole bottle of wine goes into coq au vin!
(Note: the amount in the serving dish is half the total, which would serve quite a few more than 2 people.)

Edouard Vuillard: The Meal (1800):
another image from Riley's wonderful selection.

In conclusion: Impressionist Picnics is an enjoyable and informative book to read, look at the pictures, and get ideas about food, but not really a useful cookbook. For making new dishes, I'd go to Julia Child or another more carefully tested recipe source. No wonder they put her picture on a US Postage Stamp!

Cookbook Wednesday is inspired by
Louise at Months of Edible Celebrations

One reason I wanted to use the Impressionist theme for the return of Cookbook Wednesday is that the theme of the book, with its many Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings, connects to a theme I've been exploring recently -- click to see these posts:

° Still Life

° Thinking about the Impressionists

° Luncheon with Monet