Eating Read online

  In those pre-jet days, when all but the most intrepid transatlantic travelers sailed to Europe, book publishers went first-class. Book publishing has never been a very profitable business. To make money, you went to work in a bank. Book publishing was a vocation. Without money you might go hungry. Without books you would not know who you are or where you came from or where you might be going. For me and many others, the work we did in those years was its own reward. The annual three-week scouting trip to England and the Continent by sea was a traditional perquisite. First-class passage was compensation for monastic wages. Barbara and I were going to meet the important postwar European writers. We were twenty-five and fearless. We would be gone not for the prescribed three weeks but for three months.

  First-class passengers took an elevator to the upper level of a covered West Side pier and crossed a broad, red-carpeted gangplank onto the ship. There were confetti and streamers; bellboys in pillbox hats with chin straps, delivering bouquets; porters in berets and the insignia “CGT” in red concentric circles on their blue sweaters; pages shouting names and waving telegrams; chimes warning visitors that they would soon have to go ashore. Did I imagine it or did I see Van Johnson, the actor, a camel’s-hair coat over his shoulders, retreating down the gangplank backward, waving? I remember the buttery aroma of fresh croissants, which I have ever since associated with that voyage. The Ile de France would prove to be a seagoing patisserie.

  Our cabin was not large, but spacious enough not to be overwhelmed by its walls of silk brocade, the Louis XV chairs, or the pink silk lampshades. I have a photograph of Barbara in a gray suit, hat, and veil sitting on the arm of one of these chairs. I’m standing behind her. Barbara seems stunned. I’m smiling. My confidence was not ill-founded. Our generation of Americans had every reason to trust the future. Hitler and the Japanese, as we had never doubted, were defeated. The war in Korea was an anomaly and far away. The imperial troubles to come were not yet in sight. I had been rejected for the Korean draft when the examining doctor asked when I had had polio. I said never. He said, “Think again,” and then I remembered my eighth or ninth summer, when I came down with a fever which my father said was the grippe. It had never occurred to me that this might have been polio, nor did my parents tell me. The doctor said that my right foot had been affected, something I had not previously noticed. Before I could dispute his diagnosis, I was asked to leave the line of candidates and go home. I disliked being rejected, but on reflection chose not to pursue the issue. Perhaps the doctor decided that the army would be better off without me. Our marriage proved bountiful. Though after many years it ended, the love we celebrated that day survives, undiminished after Barbara’s death last year.

  By the time we found our way to the cabin, our friends had already arrived to say goodbye and spilled out onto the corridor. I remember yellow orchids and champagne splits in a silver tub of ice, bits of conversation. Then they left, and I was alone on the afterdeck looking down at the tugs as they backed the ship away from the pier and into the Hudson.

  The next day was stormy. By late afternoon, the Ile de France, which had seemed so sturdy when its old-fashioned bows towered over the West Side Highway, was laboring through messy seas. Wrapped in blankets in a deck chair on the glassed-in promenade, I watched the ocean seem to rise almost to the level of the deck and then fall steeply away. Chopin and Satie drifted down from hidden speakers. Lunch, served on deck, had been chicken sandwiches, smoked salmon, and Chablis. I was reading the Maude translation of War and Peace. Edmund Wilson, the distinguished literary critic and essayist, was also aboard, with his wife, Elena. He was on his way to Israel to write about the Dead Sea Scrolls for The New Yorker. Wilson’s abundant output in those years required the services of several publishers. I was one of them, and we had become friends. That evening, Edmund and Elena joined us at the New Year’s Eve gala in the first-class dining room, with its grand double staircase and double-height ceiling. We had been assigned a table for six, and when the four of us arrived we found the great comic actor Buster Keaton and his wife in the other two seats. Keaton seemed uncomfortable in his tuxedo and old-fashioned starched collar. He barely spoke, oblivious to the pitching and rolling ship, unblinking, his mouth a horizontal slit, his eyes straight ahead, as deadpan as the character he played. He seemed to have no idea that Wilson in his world was as distinguished as himself in his. But when Wilson, a gifted prestidigitator who was juggling several festive cotton balls handed out at ships’ galas in those days, suggested to Keaton that he might perform for the passengers, Keaton replied politely but without expression, “No props,” and silently began juggling some cotton balls himself. I remember crêpes Suzette and cherries jubilee aflame as waiters struggled to remain upright beneath their trays, amid fox-trotters sliding this way and that across the polished floor, as the ship rose and fell through violent seas. “No props,” indeed.

  In Paris, we lived in a vast, gloomy apartment at 35 rue de la Faisanderie, off Avenue Foch, looked after by an ancient housekeeper who replied to our infrequent requests, “J’ vais au cimetière.” Someone had told us that the Grand Véfour, in the Palais Royal, was the best restaurant in Paris, so almost every day Barbara and I went there for lunch or dinner or both. With American money, everything was cheap, even the best three-star restaurants. On the ship we had drunk La Tâche for five dollars a bottle. The Grand Véfour, which had opened in 1784 as Café de Chartres, is still the most beautiful dining room in Paris, with its gilt mirrors and red velvet upholstery. The menu was classic: quenelles de brochet, sole Véronique, coulibiac Colette (named for the great writer, who lived in the Palais Royal and took her meals occasionally in the Grand Véfour, but whom we never had the good fortune to see). One day at lunch, we were each offered an ortolan, the tiny bunting that is fattened and roasted to be swallowed whole, a delicacy in southwestern France since before Caesar crossed the Rubicon. These birds were then and may still be an endangered species, and could not be served legally, but we had become regulars, and this illicit treat was the manager’s way of welcoming us.

  When we tired of the Grand Véfour, we tried more modest places: Lapérouse, with its cabinets particuliers, and Chez Allard, in the Sixth, with its rustic menu. It was there that I first had braised duck with olives, one of the few Parisian dishes of the expiring Escoffier period not covered with béchamel or espagnole in various forms. For years I served my version of this classic dish at home in New York, and occasionally still do.

  From Paris we flew to Berlin, which by then had begun to dig itself out of its wartime rubble. Bricks from ruined buildings were piled neatly along the Kurfürstendamm. The cabarets were open all night. But politically Berlin seemed to be digging itself back in, for the Cold War had begun, and Berlin, deep within the Soviet sector, was its central front. The best bookstore with fine editions of Russian classics was in the Soviet zone, and so was the best restaurant. It served thick soups, black bread, sausages, and fried potatoes in many versions. For years I kept the menu in my desk. In the United States there were no collected editions of our classic writers, an omission which, at the suggestion of Edmund Wilson, I would eventually correct. Some writers whom we met in the American zone who were working for the CIA warned us to avoid the Russian zone. The Cold War ground rules had yet to be clarified, and there was talk of kidnappings. We ignored this advice and returned often for soup and sausages, reluctant to admit that, with the war so recently ended, we were preparing to go at it again. In Berlin, amid our Cold War friends, Korea was no longer an anomaly. War now seemed routine, accompanied by the ideological quarrels in the intellectual journals that I now found it obligatory to read, and which would soon convince me that warfare, both cold and hot, is our normal state, and peace an aberration.

  We were happy to leave this bleak city still largely in ruins and drift off to Italy for a few weeks. We had been away too long and were ready to think about going home. I wondered whether I still had a job after my long absence.

  We ar
ranged passage on the Andrea Doria from Naples. In the Azores, the cheerful little ship became fogbound. We arrived in port a day late. Our waiter, whose glasses had broken during the crossing and hung lopsided across his Roman nose, explained that because of the delay we had run out of pasta. On deck as we approached our pier, an Italian father was holding his two small sons in his arms, pointing to the Manhattan skyline, and shouting, “Fantastico, bambini, fantastico.” Despite the warlike rumblings in Berlin, this was how it seemed to us, too, in the early spring of 1954. In my absence, the paperback series I had launched had gone from triumph to triumph. I was welcomed back, enthusiastically.

  Barbara and I were relieved to be back in our Greenwich Village garret, which after our month in Paris seemed to us more than ever like a set from La Bohème with its skylight and fireplace, its old brick walls, crooked floor, and window boxes filled with geraniums in spring. We had spent the last three months in hotels and restaurants and other people’s dining rooms. I was eager to cook at home, but not like our favorite Grand Véfour with its Escoffier menu. It was obvious to us that the mood had shifted. In the Paris bookshops, stacks of Samuel Beckett’s plays were piled up everywhere, and there was an existentialist on every street corner. In London, still aching from the war, The Waste Land was on everyone’s lips, with intimations of A Clockwork Orange just ahead. Inevitably, an “existential” cuisine was not far off. It would take many forms, from the Zen bakeries of San Francisco to the innovations of la nou-velle cuisine with its deconstruction of culinary metaphysics. It was in this spirit that I began to reproduce some of the simpler dishes we had encountered on our trip. Chez Allard’s wonderfully simple braised duck with olives became a favorite.

  BRAISED DUCK WITH OLIVES

  Nothing is easier than braising a duck and serving it with olives. You will need a heavy nonreactive Dutch oven, preferably porcelain over cast iron, a three-and-a-half-to-four-pound Pekin duck, a little oil for browning the duck, thyme and rosemary for stuffing, assorted vegetables, a half-bottle of Pinot Noir, port, arrowroot to thicken the braising liquid, a little Cognac, and some pitted picholine or similar olives. Dry the duck with paper towels, and with a hair dryer if you happen to have one. Remove the loose fat from neck and tail, prick the skin all over with a fork, and season the inside with salt and pepper, then stuff the duck with a few branches of rosemary and thyme. The skin should be very dry in order to brown evenly. Remove and save the wings. Heat a little oil or rendered duck fat in the Dutch oven, and brown the duck, breast side down at first, then the back and sides. When the duck is nicely browned, lift it from the cocotte, set it aside, and pour off all but a few tablespoons of fat. Toss in the duck neck, wings, and giblets (but not the liver), an onion studded with a few cloves, two medium carrots, chopped, and two stalks of celery, diced, the juice and zest of half a lemon, and two or three bay leaves. Brown the giblets and wings and caramelize the vegetables in the duck fat left in the pot. Then blend a tablespoon of arrowroot or Wondra instant-blending flour into the vegetables to make a roux, and cook for a minute or so. Heat and add to the pot two cups of rich chicken or duck stock with a cup of port and three cups of Pinot Noir or similar robust red wine. Turn the flame to high and reduce the wines and stock by a third. The liquid should not cover the duck when you return it to the cocotte, breast side down, resting on the wings, which serve as a kind of couch. Add a good pinch of sea salt. Cover the cocotte with plastic wrap, place the lid on top, and braise the duck slowly in a 325-degree oven for about an hour, checking occasionally that the breast isn’t scorched, until the leg meat is firm and the breast runs yellow when pierced. Strain the stock, discard the wings and giblets, and press the vegetables to extract the liquid. Pour the liquid into a clear glass container. Let it cool, and spoon off as much fat as possible. Or use a fat separator with a spout at the bottom and pour off the clear liquid. Better yet, chill the liquid for an hour or so, until the fat congeals enough to be spooned completely away. Reduce the stock to the consistency of light cream. If it’s too thick, thin it with a little chicken or duck stock. If it’s too thin, boil it down more. Add to the stock a handful of pitted picholine or similar green or black pitted olives. Heat a half-cup of cognac, add it to the stock, and flame it. When the duck is cool enough to handle, remove the breast meat with the grain in long, rather thin slices. Remove the legs at the joint and trim them neatly, removing any loose fat. Then arrange the legs with the sliced breast meat nicely on a warm platter. Nap with the warm sauce and olives, and serve. A Lynch-Bages from a good year would be just right, or a fine American Pinot Noir.

  PURÉED RUTABAGA

  Autumn rutabaga—peeled, hacked in chunks, and boiled until tender, then puréed with butter and a little salt in a food processor—would be a perfect accompaniment;or, more elegantly, pass the softened rutabaga through a food mill, then add butter and salt. Grilled Treviso radicchio or endive, a lightly curried cauliflower purée, or turnips in wedges braised in duck fat are also fine accompaniments.

  Save the duck fat, which is said to be less harmful than other animal fats. Add a tablespoon of duck fat to a pound of lean chuck to make a poor man’s version of Daniel Boulud’s hamburgers with foie gras.

  There are many kinds of ducks, and many ways to prepare them. My favorite is the magret or boned breast of the Moulard, a large duck bred from a Pekin female and a male Muscovy and raised for its fattened liver. Magret de Moulard can be found in high-quality markets or ordered directly from dartagnan.com, which sells magret as a by-product of its foie-gras business.

  MAGRET DE MOULARD

  Each half-breast weighs about a pound and serves two. You will need a cast-iron or heavy steel skillet, and a very sharp knife to score the skin through the fat but not into the meat in the finest cross-hatch you can manage. Lay the breast skin side down in the hot skillet, and reduce the heat so as to render the fat slowly without overcooking the meat, which must be served pink and warm: no more than 125 degrees on an instant-read thermometer, or even less, according to taste. Above all, do not overcook the magret. Pour off and save the fat as it accumulates: use it to braise a few turnips in three-quarter-inch dice. In about ten minutes, nearly all the duck fat will have been rendered. Then turn the breast over and sear the other side over high heat for a few minutes, until the meat feels firm to the touch. Keep the magret warm under a kitchen towel or in a barely warm oven.

  Meanwhile, prepare Colonel Hawker’s Sauce.

  Colonel Hawker is said to have been Wellington’s fowling officer in the Peninsula Campaign of 1809. My late dear friend, great editor, wise counselor, and fine cook, Angus Cameron, gave me this recipe years ago, and I have used it often for duck both tame and wild, venison, wild boar, and so on.

  COLONEL HAWKER’S SAUCE

  Chop three shallots coarsely, and sauté them in a tablespoon of duck fat or butter or a combination of the two. When the shallots have softened, add a tablespoon or so of arrowroot to make a roux, and cook for a minute or two. Add a cup of warm veal and duck demi-glace, which you can also order from D’Artagnan; a tablespoon each of Harvey Sauce and Mushroom Ketchup, nineteenth-century English condiments that you can order from the British Shoppe (1-800-842-6674) or thebritishshoppe.com (or substitute Worcestershire); juice of one lemon; four whole cloves; one teaspoon ground mace; and a half-teaspoon of cayenne. Reduce this slowly to about half its volume, then pour in a glass of good but not great port, and reduce again by half. Strain out the vegetables and spices, and boil down to thicken slightly if necessary. Cut the duck breast on the bias across the grain about a quarter-inch thick, or more or less as you like, fan it out nicely, and nap with the sauce. Serve with braised or sautéed turnip or puréed celeriac and a mélange of wild mushrooms.

  SEVEN

  AVE HOMARUS AMERICANUS

  The joys no less than the agonies of childhood become the substructures of maturity. I remember long summer excursions a lifetime ago with my cousins to the lobster pound at Pemaquid Point, on the Maine coast, where
, in a pine grove on a headland above a pounding sea, at tables of varnished pine, we ate lobster from steaming kettles of seawater; preceded by buckets of soft-shell steamer clams, which we dipped in mugs of clam broth to wash away the sand and then in drawn butter, in which we also dipped our lobster chunks. In winter there were lunches at Locke-Ober in Boston with my father, who referred familiarly to the grand old restaurant, with its dark paneling and gleaming silver, as Frank Locke’s, insider’s lingo of the previous century, and introduced me—I could have been no more than twelve—to the great Washington Street merchants, plump, red-faced, in their gray double-breasted suits, sipping their scotch and sodas at the other tables. There, in this dining room for men only, our lobster Savannah was served under silver domes by immaculate Irish waiters with thinning white hair and long white aprons who spooned hash-brown potatoes in cream into side dishes. Then around the corner to Summer Street, where at Bailey’s we stood amid the damp furs of Christmas shoppers at the marble counter where other pink-faced men in spotless white aprons topped conical scoops of rich vanilla ice cream in hammered-silver stemware with hot fudge, marshmallow, and pecans, so generously applied as to spill over into the saucer, a Bailey’s tradition.

  In a recipe that I contributed to the New York Times Magazine a few years ago, I described my surprise when I was preparing to grill a dozen or so lobsters, those companions of my childhood, in my Sag Harbor kitchen. This meant killing them first by plunging a stiff boning knife into the shell just behind the eyes, drawing the knife forward to split the head, and then reversing the blade to bisect the entire creature from head to tail. I had piled the lobsters on a counter next to the sink and, with no more consideration for their feelings than if I were opening an oyster or peeling a potato, reached for the first victim and split it in two. To my surprise, the other lobsters raised their claws in horror at what I had done and scuttled en masse backward. Some fell to the floor, others into the sink. I was faced with a dilemma, for it was plain that lobsters were not at all unfeeling like the potato, but kindred souls who dreaded violent death as much as you or I do.