Omelette and a Glass of Wine (23 page)

Of the
mérou
, called in English grouper, in Italy
cernia
and of which one hears so much from under-water fishermen (they too would perhaps find this book illuminating) Mr Davidson thinks highly, mentioning a sauce to serve with cold poached grouper steaks in which is incorporated some Bresse Bleu. Tantalising, that. Perhaps more details of this recipe will appear in the next edition, for which Mr Davidson is asking from his readers co-operation in the form of corrections, amplifications, authentic Mediterranean recipes.

The Spectator
, 26 April 1963

Moorish Recipes

Moorish Recipes
, collected and compiled by John, fourth Marquis of Bute, K.T., Oliver & Boyd, 7s. 6d.

A cookery book concerned more with the authenticity of the dishes than with what the English housewife may make of them is a rarity. Indeed this book was not originally intended for the public at all, and we are fortunate to get it. It is a collector’s find. The technicalities of
kuskusu
and of that remarkable papery Arab pastry are beautifully propounded. The use and composition of spices is explained; there are English and Arabic indexes.

I can testify that a Moorish dish of pigeons stuffed with raisins, almonds, cinnamon and sugar and cooked in a quantity of olive oil does wonders with those intractable birds. The fine free style in which the recipes are written and set out is most pleasing, and how elegant are the Moorish cookery pots and serving dishes shown in the illustrations. Some illuminating facts emerge. A plate of honey containing a lump of butter, in which bread is dipped, may be placed upon the table, salt never; it is up to the cook to add salt according to the
smell
of the dish when it is half cooked. Only one of the fifty-nine recipes contains garlic.
Ras el hanoot
, literally meaning ‘head of the shop’, is a tantalizing compound of pepper, cinnamon, curry, bird’s tongue, saffron wood (I should like to know more of this) and two kinds of aubergine to be used chiefly in the cooking of game. Anyone who wants to taste locust bread, a delicacy available only when the locusts make their visitation every nine years, may start planning now, for they are due next year.

The Sunday Times
, 1955

Fine Bouche

Fine Bouche: A History of the Restaurant in France
, by Pierre Andrieu (Cassell, 31s. 6d.).

Until the second half of the eighteenth century there were no restaurants in France – only taverns, wine shops, cafés, dealers in cooked meat or poultry, pastries, pies and so on. The rules as to
what each dealer might sell were clearly defined. Or so it was thought until one Boulanger, a dispenser of high-class restorative broths or
restaurants
, appeared upon the scene.

He acquired quite a reputation for the
pieds de mouton sauce blanche
, with which he provided the customers along with the soups; so his rivals declared that he had no licence to sell cooked meats. An action was brought to restrain him. With resounding publicity the affair ended in victory for Boulanger, and the ancestor of the restaurant was born.

Some twenty years later, Beauvilliers, ex-Royal cook, opened the Grande Taverne de Londres, and there established the attitude of the successful restaurateur as we know him today. From this point on it would have been of real interest to learn something of how a great restaurant works. But M. Andrieu gives us instead a bewildering chronicle of the vicissitudes of most of the famous restaurants and their owners, waggish tales of private rooms and princely wit.

We must take M. Andrieu’s word for it that on these high altars of gastronomy the food was never less than superb, the wines perfection, the service faultless, the décor invariably the last word in luxury. But the more modest establishments, both of Paris and the provinces, come out of it more convincingly.

There is some engaging information in the book, such as the true origin of
Homard à l’Américaine
, and the fact that Weber’s in the rue Royale made its name by serving Welsh Rabbit, cold roast beef, and marrow bones prepared with English mustard and served with chips.

The Sunday Times
, 4 November 1956

How Bare is Your Cupboard?

Pot-Luck Cookery; original cooking with what you have in hand, in the cupboard or refrigerator
Beverly Pepper (Faber … Faber, 18s.).

Pantry Shelf Fishbit: Turnip-Tomato Patty Casserole: Lentil Cheese Cassoulets: Ham-wiches: Fantastic Belgian Meat Balls: Veal-odds-and-ends-Casserole: Salem Fish’n Chutney Tarts: Festa Turkey-nut Logs: Mixed Beet Ring Mould: Gnocchi Semolina (pronounced Knee Oh’-Key): Chocolate Bread Custard: Curried Pea Spoon-fritters
. These haunting names are chosen for their sheer
vivid descriptiveness from a newly published book dealing with cookery ‘for a roomful of unexpected guests – or perhaps just that awkward moment when the larder seems completely bare’. But not completely bare, as it turns out. Because there is a whole thoughtful chapter telling you how to make out in what might seem to many of us even more awkward moments than having only the ingredients of Knee-Oh’Key to hand; those in fact when there is Nothing in the House but Processed Cheese or even, if you can imagine it, Nothing in the House but Cream-Style Corn, Cream-Style Corn, Nothing in the House but Cream-Style Corn.

Now, I know as well as anybody that it’s hard work writing cookery books and very easy for others to mock. The author of this work has conscientiously, not to say with almost frenetic zeal, compiled a volume of recipes dealing with what he, or she, thinks you might have in the Cupboard or Refrigerator. No doubt the public at which it was originally directed does have fifteen 2 inch lengths of leftover broccoli or ‘at least’ 1½ cups leftover cooked kidneys, thinly sliced, in its Cupboard or Refrigerator, and it is not for me to quarrel with Mr or Miss Pepper about what should be done in such situations. He or she has done his or her, work with a view to his or her audience which lives, loves, and one must believe, eats,
Veal-odds-and-ends-casserole
on the other side of the Atlantic. My bone of contention is with her or his English publishers. They’ve got, frankly, a dashed nerve to try and foist this stuff on us without so much as the courtesy of acknowledging where and when it was originally published and with not the slightest apparent attempt to change a single word for the benefit of the English public. And if a reputable firm of publishers can confidently put out a book purporting to be one of technical instruction (which is, after all, what a cookery book is supposed to be) so totally unrelated to life as it is lived in these Islands that it might as well be written in Swahili, hideously produced into the bargain, and at the fancy price of eighteen shillings, then the publishing business can hardly be as pushed as it’s always making out.

Myself, I’d prefer to spend my eighteen shillings on food. I wouldn’t care to face a roomful of hungry guests with nothing in the house but
Pantry shelf fishbits
. They might cut up rough. And I don’t know whether, in such an event, one would be entitled to send the bill for damages to the publishers.

*

This review was written for
The Sunday Times
sometime in the summer of 1957, but never published. Recently I unearthed a letter from Leonard Russell, the paper’s then Literary Editor, dated September 18th, 1957, explaining that during his absence on holiday the book in question was recommended, among a number on wine and food, to appear among ‘our gourmet advertisements’ in a special panel. Leonard said he didn’t know how this contretemps happened. ‘But it would have been too absurd to have recommended the book in one issue and to have had you exposing it utterly in the next.’

Referring to the affair as ‘somebody’s misconceived enterprise’ Leonard said he had asked the Cashier to send me a cheque for seven guineas. Yes, well
.

Chez Gee-Gee

The Gun Room, the Garrison, the Saddle Room, the Stable; a flavour of far off cantonments and safe frontier wars, a wistful feeling for the rude soldiery, fond memories of childhood loves for girl grooms and stable boys, a heady scent of manure mingled with salmon snatched straight from the tin in the harness room have come seeping these last few months through the restaurant and entertainment-after-dark columns of the weekly magazines.

If the Minister of Transport
¹
has his way and succeeds in abolishing the few surviving horse-drawn commercial vehicles in the London area then one does not need to be a professional clairvoyant to predict that the disappearance of the last brewers’ drays and costers’ flower carts will intensify our nostalgia for the urban horse and all its manifestations; and that before long half of our Belgravia and Hampstead, South Kensington and Golders Green bistros now called Le Casserole d’Abondance, La Sole Vierge, Au fils de ma Grand-Mère, La Nappe Tachée and La Poubelle will change their names to La Bouche de mon Cheval, Au Sac d’Orge, Le Horse Sexy, The Well-Served Mare, The Bit between the Teeth, the Drench, the Hock’s on the Hoof.

Tourists will stray into the Cavalry Club supposing it to be a French auberge recently acquired by Harvey’s of Bristol, the Chinese Lily Pond chain will cash in on the boom by translating the Fantang Crispy Noodles on their menus into Eight Precious Mares’ Nest No. 63; Paul Hamlyn alias Books for Pleasure will discover and publish only seventy five years out of date and for only four guineas a 4,000 page encyclopaedia entitled
La Cuisine Chevalline
illustrated with three hundred full colour reproductions of oil paintings by Sir Alfred Munnings. Three weeks later, broken down into a dozen paperbacks the book will be bought by eight million people. The entire conclave of Rump Rooms and Grill Pans will, as one, turn into Knacker Parlours.

By then a new wave will be starting, derived from sources more purely domestic than those of the barracks and the nosebag. Mr E. S. Turner’s
What the Butler Saw
, a book revealing and entertaining in a way quite other than the implication of the title, and
Anthony Powell’s wonderful recreation of a pre-1914 upper middle-class military family’s more eccentric and lugubrious servants in
The Kindly Ones
will surely engender fresh yearnings for a vanished below-stairs world of plain cooks, soldier servants, trays for the governess and the nursery, dressing gongs, and the scrape of Monkey Brand on stone sinks.

In terms of eating-boutiques and clubs, this will mean establishments called The Scullery, The Flue, The Servants Hall, The Stewed Prune, the Suet Room, Chez Cronin, The Knife Box (a little more moisture in the cabbage would have won Mr Stalleybrass his third star, as one of our earnest eating guides will be writing by 1964), the Dripping Bowl (to do full justice to Mrs Bravo’s cooking you should start with the sophisticatedly served Spotted Dog; but what a pity in a place of this quality to find such a short tinned-soup list), The Batman (this restaurant is something of an enigma. You are served delectable Swiss cuisine in genuine English surroundings. The day I was there the litter bins were quite overflowing. But perhaps on days other than August Bank Holiday they may not be so bustling. Mr Lavender’s early training is revealed by the superb polish on his chocolate éclairs. The coffee is traditionally made with water and coffee but could have been a little drier. The home-made toast was included in the price of this soigné meal, four pounds ten for two.)