The Good Life
Bonnes bouches
Pamela Vandyke Price
Most people have to go out and do energetic things to achieve their pleasures. The gastronome merely has to keep each sense alert. For example, I was cleaning out the vinegar crock and, looking up from the cultures therein, saw a builder's van passing, bearing the doubtless wholly inappropriate name of' Mattana.' Then, I opened an ostensibly innocuous booklet about liqueur chocolates, about which I feel as I do about caviare and baked potatoes—the good things of life deserve to be taken singly. This publication whisked me at once back into the 'Anyone for tennis?' epoch, with its recommendation of curacao as "especially suited to lunch and supper parties for female friends" (of what sex, I at once wished to know, could be the host?), and a "meal with avocadoes and artichokes, followed by Dover' sole made into a stroganoff.", (I think they must assume this is some kind of sweater). "Close with meringue baskets filled with sliced peaches and pass the liqueur Curacao chocolates" — while life can still quiver in your corpuscles, I presume.
But the real gem surged from the page of full colour advertising for a brand of apple juice. A dish of what appeared to be mushrooms in toasted cheese, surrounded by halved sausages, was entitled 'Quenelles de brochet,' which were alluringly described as "Cubes of halibut/ turbot in batter with prawn sauce." Now I am not a devotee of the pike, the appearance of which evokes those transatlantic ladies whose lips resemble the teeth of a saw and whose voices sound like ditto. But, as the apotheosis of fish ballery is the pounded flesh of Esos hicius, I see no reason for depriving this creature of its name in print. The turbot and halibut are not at all the same—as the advertising agents for Schloer would have known if they could have consulted Jane Grigson's Fish Cookery (International Wine and Food Publishing Co £4.95). Mrs Grigson writes with clarity and simplicity (she is married and dedicates this book to ,Geoffrey Grigson, that admirable stylist and outstanding poet), and, although she modestly admits using the recipes of many writers about fish, her comments, advice and introductory pieces to each section . of this comprehensive book are both erudite and charming. This is a handsome book to look at and one to read as well as to cook by.
I am not a great lover of fish dishes—possibly being a Piscean?—and many fish subjected to the poached or steamed processes make me think I arn eating boiled handkerchiefs, while certain complicated fish productions give me the impression that I am working my way through a Fair Isle cardigan, moist from the heavy breathing ,of a depressed ewe. But this book made me want to cook fish—and I did. It tasted both enjoyable and like fish, too. Jostling Fish Cookery for the 'best buy' in books for the gastronome this Christmas will be Maxime McKendry's Seven Centuries of English Cookery (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £3.60). The author, daughter of that very well-known authority on delicious food and eternal beauty, Lady Birley, and sister of the owner of Annabel's where the food is as good as the setting and people are glamorous, is married to the Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Her recipes have been edited and 'retested by Arabella Boxer. Does all this sound too good to be true? In fact this is both an interesting and creative cookery book, each section introduced by a well researched account of how people ate, as well as what; there is nothing folksily olde worlde about the recipes, and instructions, ingredient and quantities are given in British as well as American terms. The black and white illus trations are delightful and a very small criticism is that I should have liked to have been given the sources of these. Some recent horrors of public catering have made many people and, indeed, whole countries and continents, forget that in the past England was very much a country where many people ate extremely well, where great chefs liked working. because their employers knew about and respected food and wines, and where many good cooks achieved excellent fare, day
after day, without all that continental trumpeting of their ac
complishments. This book might be a polite reminder to civilised Europeans that the English are not fish fingers in human guise—though what is a fish finger, I ask myself, if not an ordinaire or even cru artisan quenelle?
A smaller-scale gift might be the Habitat Cook's Diary for 1974 (Habitat £1.25). This, in addition to being a type of calendar, is fifty-,
two pages of vegetable recipes and ideas. Caroline Conran has supplied the recipes, again praiseworthily admitting her debt to several other authorities (how very nice it is when people do this instead of using without even rewriting someone else's recipe),
and Faith Shannon has contribut ed the exquisite coloured drawings. These show the beauty of
vegetables so well that my sole criticism is that they should not be printed on both sides of the pages—for they will be kept and deserve framing; I hope design. ers of wallpaper, tiles, fabrics and many books will exploit Miss Shannon's talent as it deserves.
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