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A Good Appetite

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    Excerpted from JUST ENOUGH LIEBLING by A. J. LIEBLING

    The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite. Without this, it is impossible to accumulate, within the allotted span, enough experience of eating to have anything worth setting down. Each day brings only two opportunities for field work, and they are not to be wasted minimizing the intake of cholesterol. They are indispensable, like a prizefighter's hours on the road. (I have read that the late French professional gourmand Maurice Curnonsky ate but one meal a day-dinner. But that was late in his life, and I have always suspected his attainments anyway; so many mediocre witticisms are attributed to him that he could not have had much time for eating.) A good appetite gives an eater room to turn around in. For example, a nonprofessional eater I know went to the Restaurant Pierre, in the Place Gaillon, a couple of years ago, his mind set on a sensibly light meal: a dozen, or possibly eighteen, oysters, and a thick chunk of steak topped with beef marrow, which M. Pierre calls a Délice de la Villette-the equivalent of a "Stockyards" Delight." But as he arrived, he heard M. Pierre say to his headwaiter, "Here comes Monsieur L. Those two portions of cassoulet that are left-put them aside for him." A cassoulet is a substantial dish, of a complexity precluding its discussion here. (Mr. Root devotes three pages to the great controversy over what it should contain.) M. Pierre is the most amiable of restaurateurs, who prides himself on knowing in advance what his friends will like. A client of limited appetite would be obliged either to forgo his steak or to hurt M. Pierre's feelings. Monsieur L., however, was in no difficulty. He ate the two cassoulets, as was his normal practice; if he had consumed only one, his host would have feared that it wasn't up to standard. He then enjoyed his steak. The oysters offered no problem, since they present no bulk.

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November 15, 2007

Cookbooks and Cooks

A Taste of Oregon

With this post, Food, Wine, Life's Pleasures breaks, what for us, is new ground - recipes and their associated cookbooks.

Microwave_2
  (Southwest Museum of Engineering, Communications and Computation)

 
On the shelves at Powell's Books for Cooks ( and Gardeners ), which we haven't perused since they closed the doors from Pastaworks, we found several different versions of Junior League cookbooks. The Junior League has been issuing cookbooks as fund raisers  from all parts of the country for decades. We thought it might be instructive to compare two, both by the Junior League of Eugene - a 1980 version called "A Taste of Oregon" and the 1990 reissue called "Savor the Flavor of Oregon"

Differences between the two are subtly instructive. The chapter on 'Game' found in the 1980 version has been left out of the 1990 version. As microwave ovens had only recently become popular, the 1980 version has a chapter that seems slightly oxymoronic - microwave recipes.  Both the 1980 and 1990 versions have recipes for Tom and Jerrys  - a sweet, winter holiday cocktail involving bourbon or rum and beaten egg yolks, invented by the 'father of the cocktail' - Jerry Thomas; and surprisingly, while the 1980 version mentions wine in a variety of ways without once mentioning Pinot Noir, the 1990 version omits wine entirely.

But perhaps most instructive is how the 1980 "A Taste of Oregon" suggests we begin cooking vegetables:

  1. Candied Carrots - "Defrost carrots"
  2. Broccoli Casserole - "Cook broccoli according to directions on package."

No wonder we needed those microwaves.

 

Comments

ms

Just a note: "A Taste of Oregon" and "Savor the Flavor of Oregon" are two completely different cookbooks published by the Junior League of Eugene. The second (Savor) was not a reprint/republish of the 1980 (Taste) cookbook. In fact, "A Taste of Oregon" is still being sold and is in its 17th printing with over 290,000 copies sold. Also, there is a third cookbook, published in 2002, titled "Cooking from the Coast to the Cascades". Each book is its own entity, not a revamped reissue of an earlier original.

Posted by: ms | January 14, 2008 at 11:54 AM

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