Richard Olney was an American who spent most of his life living in France, and who became a reknown expert on both cooking and French wine. His autobiography, ' Reflexions', which I've written about previously, was a fascinating book.
During his writing career, he was asked to write books on the history and significance of two of the most famous of French wines - Romanee-Conti, a Burgundy, and Chateau d'Yquem, a Sauterne.
Most of the books that I buy are the result of reading recommendations from authors I respect, which send me to my computor and a diligent search thru Amazon. Sometimes some of the books I'm after are out of print, but one of the reasons I'm such a fan of Amazon, is that they will painlessly link me to booksellers who are selling second hand copies of something. It is not unusual for the cost of the freight to get the book to NZ to be considerably more than the price of the book itself. I mention that becos this copy of Yquem is an updated version, bookended by the commentaries of other people, who have edited and added to Richard Olneys original text, subsequent to his death. My copy of 'Romanee-Conti was an original edition, and had been a library book at some stage, so it was pure Richard. This one isn't, and that may or may not be significant.
 
Richard was personally close to the last generation of the Lur Saluces family who had owned the  Yquem estate for generations, prior to the buyout by the corporate group LMVH, and I suspect that this updated version, plays up the modern story, and pushes the historical information to the background, to portray a seamless transition from family owned, to corporate. However that could just be me being a bit picky, but I know from his autobiography that he was distraught at the manoevrings that led to his friend being pushed sideways at the winery, and he also had a very established ego that would have chaffed at sharing writing honours with anyone else- and a number of chapters in this book are headed; Richard Olney and Francis Mayeur. That, I suspect, indicates that some of his text has been altered.

None of which detracks really from the fact that it is a fascinating story about a complex wine, which is quite regularly called the 'king of wines'. I have been fortunate enough on a number of occasions to try sips of Yquem from different vintages,  when people have bought treasured bottles to the restaurant, and the expression 'liquid gold',  best encapsulates my sense of wonder at something that can taste so rich, and yet not be in any way cloying. The complexity in the wine is extraordinary, and this book describes that process as it has happened over hundreds of vintages, both in the vineyard and the winery.

It is made from grapes that have been attacked by the botrytis fungi, which leave them looking like dried out, quite disgusting raisins. By a miracle of science ( that I've read and don't profess to understand!), the process of the botrytis ( noble rot) alters the chemical balance in the grape, all of which, correctly handled, lead to an extraordinary 'unctuousness and complexity in the resulting wine.'

I would love to know what induced the very first winemaker, wherever it was in the world ( and this book references sweet wines made back in Ancient Egyptian times), to press the first bunch of botrytis affected grapes - becos they look truly disgusting, and a very far cry from grapes usually used to make wine. Coincidence or calculated trial? I guess we'll never know for sure cos its buried too far back in the mists of time. But at Yquem that process of ensuring that the grapes are attacked by the fungi, and picked in their optimum condition ( ie withered to the 'roasted' stage) means a huge amount of work - and the efforts made to ensure ongoing standards are maintained, seamlessly are quite extraordinary.
The average life of a vine is 45 years - so there is constant pulling out of sections of the vineyard - having it lie fallow and then replanting going on. The unique flavour of Yquem comes, the experts say, from the 'terrior' the soil and climatic conditions, particular to the 400 odd acres that make up the estate. So the vines may come and go under careful management over decades, but the wine continues to sparkle as something uniquely special becos of the land where they grow.
And that is a point underscored ever so subtely in the book - winemaking techniques may have been upgraded, and lots of capital spent on the Chateau since LMVH took over, but never to the detriment of the flavour of the wine.

I have always loved dessert wines, and we feature a number of them at Somerset,( but regretfully no Yquem... yet!) becos I believe them to be a wonderful way of finishing a meal. However,  I also remember my sense of amazement the first time I got to try a rich liver pate with a noble rot wine, ( It was niether Yquem or fois gras - a combination, much touted in this book), but something that I initially thought was going to be far too rich, was in fact a sublime combination. And that is a line of enquiry that the book discusses further - the thought that Yquem doesn't have to just be a dessert accompainment. Becos of the complexity in its flavours it goes with a whole range of meats and fish, and Olney presents a range of extraordinary menus for dinners dating back to 1926, that have centered around Chateau d'Yquem.
Hmmm...
It has always seemed the height of extravagance to me to cook with a fantastic wine, rather than just sipping it - but maybe real extravagance, is to cook with the wine, and then open another bottle to drink while eating the dish.
Must try it sometime!

Have woken to intense blue skies,  much to my considerable relief. We are catering a large wedding in a marquee tonite, and as organised as you can aim to be, everything, but everything in these marquee weddings centers on the weather. Today is at a fabulous spot - the brides fathers home, and I'm so pleased for everyone,( including me!) that the weather is going to allow things to flow smoothly.
As an aside, some of the most memorable weddings we have done, have been under atrocious weather conditions - there is just something about the added complexity that rain and wind can bring, that makes people go that extra distance  and creates some special laughes as you battle the elements. But there is no doubt, that there is quite enough pressure involved in getting mains to 110 people as quickly as practical, without the added stress of worrying about how we are going to get the plates from the kitchen to the marquee without the food being rained on, or blown off!

I am about to start the packing that I do, to load up the car, before Wendy and I head out to set up the tables, and deal with any last minute instruction. I've just strained the mango star tea thats been infusing overnite, which we use to make a beautifully cheerful pink hued iced tea. That goes out in huge jars and will be mixed onsite. I've also got to grind coffee, and assemble all the bar paraphenalia ( forgetting wine knives is never a good look - although in todays world our life has been made incredibly easier by the advent of screw caps!), aprons, and a few other bits and pieces on my list. Rick and the kitchen staff will come out in the truck a bit later, and then the rest of the front staff will arrive, before the guests turn up for that first glass of bubbly. And I must remember teabags, becos someone always wants a cup of tea, and teabags are something that I am notorious for forgetting. Which is why they're top of my list...

Finished this book last nite, with some regret, becos its written in a series of essays, that I've taken much pleasure in dipping into over the last little while. We spent 5 days in Paris at the end of our Italian cookschool trip a few years back - we flew from Venice to Paris, expressly becos I was concerned that we might never get back to Europe, and I didn't want to die not having been to Paris. Its a city I've read much about, and one I really wanted to visit. And now of course having being, I am far from satiated. Quite the reverse in fact. I hope one day to go and spend some months there - just living and absorbing. And I know from my reading that I am far from alone in that fascination. This book is written by an American journalist, who with his wife and toddler son decided to go and live in Paris for 5 years.

He writes about different facets of French life, as he comes to understand what makes the French pysche so paradoxical, in a deeply satisfying style that was a pure pleasure to read. His story about one of the great Parisian brassieres been bought out by a corporate chain, Brasserie Balzar, and the regulars deciding to stage a sit in in protest,  becos something that was so familiar and precious to their daily life was under threat of losing its personal idiosyncrasies, could only have happened in France.  That people care so much about tradition...

    'I was so overtaken by the excitement of the strike, and the action, and then I was so happily filled with a sense of moral indignation, and self-righteous pleasure, that I kept away from the Balzar, and for a while I didn't miss it at all. As generations of French revolutionaries have discovered, moral self-righteousness is a very good short-term substitute for pleasure, but it wears out. Now I realize that the Balzar still exists on the rue des Ecoles and that I have lost if for good, and I think about the light coming in on a spring night, and the way the waiters took the food from the oval plates, and the simple poulet roti, and how good it all was, and I miss it all the time."

In other words they fought for a romantic notion - they didn't want change, but change happened anyway, as it has a habit of doing.

Its a beautiful book - the french are interpreted by a  sensitive man, who watches and muses, and who more than anything, cares.
Needless to say, it has just intensified my conviction that one day, I am going to have to go...

Denis Cotter owns a vegetarian restaurant in the city of Cork in Southern Ireland called, Cafe Paradiso. We have met him and his ex wife on a number of occasions when they were back in Tauranga visiting Bridgets relatives. I have his previous 2 cookbooks, both of which are inspiring visions of what vegetarian cooking can be. Forget the lentils and  drab pottery! His food is vibrant and flavoursome, and he pulls on inspiration from all round the world to come up with new ideas.
This book while containing recipes, is more a treatise on his approach to vegetables and his relationship with Ultan Welsh, a local grower who supplies most of the produce for the restaurant, and who is constantly experimenting with what else can be grown. Unlike the more staid conservatism that we encountered in both rural France and Italy, where they stick with what it is that they've been growing for the last few centuries, these guys are constantly on the prowl to see what else they can come up with. An approach that is very similar to how we view things in NZ, I felt.

The book had a personal dimension for me, becos not only had we met Denis on a couple of occasions here at Somerset, we also stayed at Ultan and his partner's B&B,  Gort na nain that they run on the same land which they market garden. We had headed up to Cork at the end of our French cookschools in 07, and knowing that Paradiso was somewhere close to Ballymaloe Cookschool, which was the main reason for us going, I'd been on the restaurant website trying to calculate distances, and in doing so ended up with a link to Ultan and Lucy, and we decided to stay there for our first nite in Cork with friends who had come with us.
Lucy and Ultan are also vegetarians, and cooked us a beautiful meal from Denis' 2nd cookbook, and we drank wine from the Bordeaux  region in France where we'd just been, and argued over whether Richie McCaw was a cheat - as you do! A wonderful nite.
The next morning Lucy found gumboots for us ( Ireland is wet!), and we wandered over the land, with her explaining what they were doing in the various tunnel houses, and what they were hoping to achieve.

Ultan in the meantime had done a delivery to Cafe Paradiso and made a lunchtime booking for us, which he reported back gleefully had caused some consternation becos of my surname ' Butcher".
What Ultan and Lucy do is hard, repetitive work - but immensely satisfying I would imagine. This book is a description in large part of the symbiosis between Denis as the chef, and Ultan as the grower, and how they are constantly looking at new vegetables or varieties. The mutual respect for what the other does is pallible, and the photos are lovely.
I remember an awkward conversation with Denis at Somerset a number of years ago now, when he quizzed me about the provenance of some of our produce, and made me uncomfortable with how little I knew. He has a rather long nose - and I definitly felt that I had being looked down it, at! At the time I thought he was being unreasonably picky, becos buying direct from growers just wasn't feasible back in the mid 90s. But times have changed, and over the last few years, things like Farmers Markets have sprung up all over; and people are increasingly expressing concern over how far the produce in Supermarkets may have travelled. We are embracing the concept of seasonality in our food to an increasing degree, and it is a natural procession from there to get to know the people who grow our food.
This summer season we've had the great pleasure of getting our berries direct from the Somerfield family at the top of Oropi. That has involved a car trip for Rick 2 or 3 times a week, that may be a little inconvenient, when compared to having things brought to us at the restaurant - but that slight inconvenience was more than compensated for by the freshness of the berries. They were truly magnificent.
Along a similar vein we have a keen young boy in Te Puna who has been supplying us with green beans since the start of this year, and who with the encouragement of his parents wants to grow other things for us. We are simply delighted to support him.
And then this morning we drove miles out to rural Papamoa ( I hadn't realised that those 2 words together wasn't yet an oxymoron!) to talk to a melon grower who can also supply us with tomatoes.
So - by what feels like natural steps, I guess we are heading in that direction that Denis articulates so eloquently in this book, and from the conversations I have with people in the cookschools, I know that we are not alone in that.

It is my personal belief, that we are going to see an increasing trend in years to come, of the reduction in the importance of a hunk of protein as the main  constituent in a lot of our food. Not becos we've all become squeemish over the fact that an animal must die so we can eat meat, although that doubtless influences some of us - but I suspect the most abiding influence will be the proportional rise in the cost of that piece of meat, and we will all start looking at ways we can make a little go further. Nothing like economic necessity to change thinking!
Some of the great food cultures in the world, have, since time began, been frugal in their use of meat, so its nothing new, but it is an adjustment for those of us who grew up on a daily diet of beef and mutton. My children eat a very different  diet to what I did growing up, and I suspect that is a process of evolution that will continue for their children - and it is not something I see in anyway as a negative. Far from it in fact. When you read the wonderful recipes in this book, you understand fully that good vegetarian cooking isn't about finding a substitute for meat, but all about celebrating produce in its on right.

We rolled out of bed yesterday and headed over to the Mount without paying much attention to the weather. Driving over the harbour bridge we commented on the ominous looking clouds rolling in, and by the time we got to Pilot Bay ( Rick always insists on driving that way round to Marine Parade, which drives the rest of us insane, but there you go...) raindrops were falling on the windowscreen, and the consensus between the 3 of us that we'd do breakfast and forego the exercise part, becos we weren't attired appropriately.

But that idea got thwarted when we headed into our normal cafe ' Slowfish' to discover all the internal tables taken, and we hadn't garbed up enough to sit outside. Rather than stand around waiting for someone to leave - never comfortable applying that kind of pyschological pressure - we beat a retreat. I thought we were coming home to make our own hollandaise sauce, but Rick decided to drive past Babette which is away from the main drag of cafes, and we went in there instead, and had a lovely breakfast.

As at Slowfish, its a pleasure to eat at a place that prides itself on making its own food. Slowfish has the services of Dean, who we think is the best baker in town, and the slices and things at Babette didn't look too dusty either.

Its all too common now for the franchise cafes to buy in alot of their food from centralised production kitchens, and that makes for a sameness that can become very monotonous. It may work for the likes of MacDonalds, but I know I prefer to  go to places that show individual flair, and Babette had that in bucket loads. We noted its open for dinners also, so somewhere we'll have to try soon.

I

Rick made some menu changes last nite - the most obvious change was to move on from berry fruit into stone fruit which is now in plentiful supply. The strawberries that were  leftover in the chiller, I've made into icecream, following a David Lebovitz recipe out of his book ' The Perfect Scoop'. Icecreams are something that Rick and I are analysing in a lot more detail at the moment - different techniques and methods, and this book has been the latest to arrive. The icecream is currently churning, and will comprise supper for all of us I suspect....(After we've served everyone else in the restaurant first!)

This is also the time of year for cherries - we get up 10k a week from Central Otago, and somehow it has become my self designated job to stone them. I bought more than one stoner in the forlorn hope that I might occasionally get some help, but it usually falls to me, and I go off into a quiet reverie while I stone them, and simmer the red wine that they're going to be bottled in. Also pickle some in verjus, to go with the Hohepa cheese, and I tried glaceing some last year, with considerable success.
I started this process a couple of years ago of buying direct from the grower, with some trepidation, that it would end up  like alot of my good ideas, and my enthusiasm would wane in the face of the weekly monotony. But that hasn't been the case at all - and I'm instead finding it a hugely satisfying process to embark on.

The chefs in the kitchen at the restaurant do this sort of thing day in and day out - becos virtually everything, even the butter, gets made from scratch - so they are used to it. But I'm somewhat more of a lightweight when it comes to cooking, and tend to indulge when the mood takes me. Over cherry season though - I'm obligated to attend to them when they arrive cos they're not going to last long. So I do.

Rick has put them on the dessert menu in a cherry tart, with pastry made with pinenuts and aniseed, and creme patissiere on the base. Simple and elegant - although I have to keep reminding the staff to warn customers that they were handstoned and there might just be the occasional errant stone...

From this:

To this:

And if you think that looks messy, you should see the state of my nails...

It is a warm, barmy evening and we have tables out on the deck enjoying the evening air - all in stark contrast to the torrential downpour of last nite.
All tables are in, and orders are underway, and the booking that I had thought was going to be an old chef boyfriend who I haven't caught up with in awhile, turned out to be someone else, so I have come home to my desk and a few jobs that I wanted to get done, now I don't have to check out how he is!

Chris and Ann French were in for dinner tonite- they are extremely good customers who have become personal friends over the many years that they have been coming to the restaurant. Both have a great passion for food and cooking, and Chris sends me many pointers to areas where he thinks my culinary education may be lacking. Internet recipes flow thru on a regular basis!

They very much represent the type of people that the longevity of Somerset has been built on. Customers who go back a long, long way, and who have shared all sorts of ups and downs with us - and who have been unrelenting in their support. For me personally, it is quite simply what this business is all about. Nothing will ever give me quite the same satisfaction as this kind of personal connection.
And given that Chris and I spent the first few years of our acquaintance not liking each other at all, it must say something for the food becos they kept coming back, even though I thought he was extraordinarily rude for a  long time. Even today we warn new staff not to take him at face value - if he seems abrupt, don't take it personally, smile and carry on, cos under all that he really is a sweetie, and that side of him will come to the fore once he's got your measure!

Chris is also the person singularly responsible for dragging me, sometimes kicking and screaming into the 21st century with computors. He is a buff - one of those people who just loves to be challenged by a computor not doing as it aught, and who will sit down and go thru layers and layers of stuff until he finds the problem. I watch the process, kind of mesmorised, but not understanding hardly any of it - even though almost by default, along the way, I have picked up enough skills to cope most of the time. This has been a bad week - and  I had a few glitches that made for a tedious couple of days. Chris has been out and sorted things and I'm back on track with a huge sense of relief, becos the need to resort to my computor is now so basic that when it isn't working properly, it goes beyond frustating!

The conversation between the two of us as he sorts thru what the problem may be is usually reasonably robust, becos my intellectual capabilites are more often then not called into question, and I naturally feel a need to defend myself.  Rick has been known to drop in a comment from the background, calling us to order, but as rude as I may have to be to defend myself, there is no doubt that I simply wouldn't cope with what I want to do in the computer world, if I hadn't had Chris to call on.

So Chris - this blog is a sincerely meant tribute to you, for all your time and energy ( and abuse!). I really do think you are wonderful - and the contribution you make to Somerset is huge.
Many, many thanks!!I

We did our first big outcatering function for the year on Saturday nite. For reasons I don't fully understand all the catering jobs for this season are large - most of them well over 100 people. This one was extra large becos  the degree of organisation that went into it, was significant. I'd enlisted Anna Robertsons help, since converting a hanger into an appropriate venue for a black tie event, was  going to be well beyond my range of capabilites. Especially becos we had the added complication of the client booking a major band who were going to need better acoustics and lighting than you would normally encounter in a hanger.
Anna worked her magic, as she is seriously proficient at doing, and she enlisted the guys from Baycourt to take care of all the sound and lighting issues - and they were truly awesome. And confirmed for me in the process, how important it is to get experts in to do stuff. Their degree of knowledge and experience in their particular field, means that they anticipate all kinds of stuff that I'd never have thought of in advance. Plus they've made the investment in the appropriate equipment, so they do what they do really well, and in the process remove a huge amount of angst from our shoulders. ( And there was quite enough of that weighing me down as it was!)

Outcatering at this magnitude is a serious amount of work; from the  organisation in advance; the food prep; the lugging of stuff to and from the venue;  the need to be flexible becos numbers and timing never go as pre-organised; and  the requirement of lasting the distance, which can mean waiting until the last person has driven off in a taxi, and we've cleared all the glassware and tables and chairs of the carpet which is going to be uplifted at 9am the next morning. I think we departed at about 2.30 am. As you do.
They're hard work, physically and mentally, and I'm in awe of those companies who cater multiple functions in a week. I'm not sure I could do it with that kind of consistency - I always need a few days to recover!

Setting up stage...

Stage/sound and lighting...

You need to be exceedingly versatile when it comes to kitchen facilities. Preciousness doesn't work at times like this!

Final preparations happening just prior to the guests starting to arrive...

Richard Olney is one of my foodwriting heros. I read his autobiography last year with a sense of umtrammeled delight, and in  response to that, tracked down the 2 books he'd written on 2 of the worlds greatest wines - Romanee-Conti, and Chateau d'yquem.
I haven't as yet had the opportunity to try Romanee-Conti. No-one I know has conveniently turned up at the restaurant with a bottle tucked under their arm unfortunetly, but I have been given sips of Chateau d'yquem, and I remember that as one of lifes more momentous taste experiences.
Romanee-Conti is a burgundy, and burgundy equals pinot noir in our parlance. Domaine de la romanee-conti is considered the most prestigous of them all. This book explores the history of the vineyard, which extraordinaryly, goes back 11 centuries ( or at least that seems specatacular to someone immersed in NZ wine culture which only goes back a few decades, rather than centuries..), and discusses how both viticulture and the wine making methods have evolved, but also still stayed true to tradition. Sounds dry, but its anything but.

'Romanee-Conti has been collecting adjectives, analogies and hyperboles for two centuries. Ever since M.de Cussy,back in 1784, described a bottle of Romanee, as bottled velvet and satin, velvet and satin have become part of the repertoire. As the vocabulary of wine has become more sophisticated, these textures have been joined by the scents of violets, wild cherries, raspberries, strawberries, plums, spices, licorice, truffles, game, undergrowth and other essences.
There is always a sense of drama as one approaches Romanee-Conti. It is as if all the stops have been pulled on a great cathedral organ, not in the sense that the wine is overpowering, for it is all delicacy and nuance, it is the infinite complexity which makes one catch ones breath."

To be honest, I  am quite often  left feeling distinctly intimidated in the company of wine experts, who discuss wine using language that leaves me befuddled and confused. My personal wine analysis tends to form more along the lines of whether I like it or not, although one of my new years resolutions is to exercise a little more discernment.
But my problem is that I've got cynical over the years observing too many people treat great wines as a kind of trophy, and seeming to feel that they should be treated with special deference becos they have had the foresight ( and deep pockets ) to invest in something considered the best. It has occasionally seemed to me to be more about their egos, and less to do with the actual flavours of the wine, which is what I thought wine was all about. But no. For some people, if Robert Parker or Wine Spectator rank a wine highly then they will buy it, becos if they say its good then it must be good, and to them, an exhorbitant price tag, just underscores that validity. Hmm...

Richard Olney, by contrast had a superbly critical, and fiercly independant palate ( even though, curiously, he was a life long smoker), and this book is a paean sung to the background and history of a wine that is held in such high esteem. Its fascinating.

One of the New Zealand pinots, Wild Earth, from central Otago has recently won the accolade in an international wine competition ( London I think, but I could be wrong), of the top red in the world. A heavy mantle to carry I would imagine, for a relatively new winery. I get twitchy about competitions - wine, food and restaurant ones, becos the concept of 'best' is so...., I don't know, so ...ephemeral. How the hell do you rank and define the notion of best? It must surely vary, so much, depending on individual preferences.

Romanee-Conti has centuries of tradition and expectation that has built up the culture of mystique and creates the demand that allows it to be sold for thousands of dollars a bottle. Wild Earth by contrast is less than 10 years old as a winery. It sells for conspicuously less money. But does that make it a lesser wine?!
Don't get me wrong. I think its fantastic that NZ pinots are finally getting some recognition on the world stage after years of being ever so politely denigrated by Jancis Robinson and Robert Parker. I've just taken delivery of some cases of Wild Earth ( becos I can afford them, unlike Romanee-Conti!), and I await the ensuing conversations that I'm sure I will have with a number of people, who will want to decide whether they feel it is worthy of the label its been given. Thats the cool thing about wine - everyones an expert!

As I write this, I'm sipping a glass of Delta Pinot Noir from Malborough -  a pinot noir that no less than Robert Parker gave a score of 90/100, and one that I've ordered in for a function we're doing this weekend for an extremely good client, who also happens to be a wine buff. He's left the wine choices to me, beyond stating a preference for the bubbly becos of nostalgic connatations, and I've ranged wide, trying to come up with an appropriate mix. Conspicuous quantities were delivered today, and I opened a bottle of the pinot in a mild panic over whether it will live up to its promise. Rick and I have decided we really like it, and I can but hope our client shares our sentiments.
But thats the thing about wine - it is such a personal expression, so we will just have to wait and see!

This is an old cookbook by a classicist French chef who died in the 1950's which has been republished, becos I suspect, some of the more reknown chefs in these current times, claim it as a seminal book in their learning to be where they are now. Thomas Keller says in his introduction:

'I believe that Fernand Point is one of the last true gourmands of the twentieth century. His ruminations are extraordinary and thought-provoking - he has been an inspiration for legions of chefs. Ma Gastronomie was the first cookbook that opened my eyes and made me more consicious of the entire dining experience. It made me think of the guest, and the culture surrounding food and restaurants.'

M. Point owned a restaurant in Lyons called La Pyramide, and it became the most famous restaurant in France, and in doing so broke with tradition. Up until then chefs had stayed in the kitchen, but M.Point was a larger than life personality  who liked to come into the restaurant and talk to his customers. And as word got around that something special was happening in a restaurant in Lyon, people flooded in from all over. 

He believed that dining out was a total experience, everything had to be designed to ensure the guests comfort, and no detail was too small to be overlooked. It was a totally consuming way of living and working - and his legacy has lived on thru a number of his apprentices, who in their turn have gone onto be some of the greatest chefs working in France. People like Paul Bocuse, and the Troisgros brothers. Of the 18 restaurants in France that had 3 Michelin stars ( the highest possible culinary ranking), 7 were run by chefs who had trained under M. Point.

His significance was that he broke thru the traditions that had enveloped the culinary world since Careme and  Escoffier, and came up with new ways of looking at food. Back in the 30s and 40s, those ideas were considered revolutionary, but ironically when I read thru his menus now I find them remarkably old fashioned,  and heavy. Lots and lots of fois gras and cream and truffles.

So I read the book more for his philosophy on what  makes a restaurant great,  and what makes a chef inspiring, and found all sorts of bon mots tucked away. However even there, so much of his approach wouldn't survive in the modern world - becos things have changed so much. He used to have a barber came and shave him on the deck of the restaurant every morning and during that preformance would discuss with his sous chef the days proceedings, and while that was happening  they would drink a magnum ( ie 1500ml!! ) of champagne.  The prodiguous consumption  and the generosity that he extended to people was just extraordinary.

Our world is too fast and too tough to ever dream of replicating that kind of lifestyle, but it makes for wonderful reading. He died in his 50s, and his wife toughed it out and continued to run the restaurant while retaining the 3 stars, and staying true to his vision, in the face of a wide spread conviction that she wouldn't be able to do it.

Among his well known sayings is one that made me smile:

'When I stop in a restaurant I don't know, I always ask to shake hands with the chef. I know if he is thin, I'll probably eat poorly. And if he is thin and sad, the only hope is in flight.'

The photos of M.Point reveal a girth that in todays world would be discribed as morbidly obese. He obviously never deprived himself of any indulgence, and regarded anyone in the culinary world who did, as somehow being suspicious. To be a great chef, you had to love food. To love food, you had to eat it, and in doing so you would not be thin. Times have changed, alot of great chefs I know, including the one I'm married too, stay thin  by exercise.  Rick loves to eat, but he will never put on weight becos of the amount of running and cycling that he does.  A form of excertion that M.Point would have regarded with total distain!

All interesting...

Marcella Hazan was the first Italian food writer whose cookbooks we used back in the mid 80's when we started here at Somerset, and although our library has extended considerably since those days, it is still her books that we turn too when we want to answer a query we may have about something to do with Italian food.

This book is the story of the journey of her life( not a recipe book), and how it began in a small rural Italian village prior to the Second World War, and has gone thru a number of gyrations ending up in its final stages in an appartment in Florida. How anyone could leave glorious Venice to go and live in Florida bewilders me, but my bones aren't as old as hers, and I do recall the unedifying vision of an elderly, obviously unwell lady being wheeled past us in a hellishly uncomfortable looking wooden cart thru the uneven flagstones of Venetian alleyways to the nearest boat. The Venetian version of an ambulance I guess - all that the narrow streets would allow. So perhaps I can sort of understand her reasoning. But Florida?!!

She started doing cookschools by chance - small ones in her home in New York for 6 people. Her background wasn't food, it was science.  Craig Clairbourne, a then famous food writer for the New York Times, wrote a spiel about them effectively putting her on the map, and book offers followed, as did the desire to decamp back to Italy to do classes in situ, where she could duplicate the experience of taking people to the food markets. They started in Bologna, where the city itself paid for them to set up a commercial kitchen, recognising the tourism potential that would flow. And it certainly did - people came from all around the world - both ordinary and seriously famous people came. People from all sorts of occupations - medical, legal as well as culinary et al. And her descriptions of some of those attendees and the problems she had making squeemish modern sensibilites accept the realities that food doesn't come in plastic bags, but as whole squid that needs to be cleaned, or fish that has eyes in heads that need to be removed or...  Reactions that we  regularly observe in our classes. Some people prefer to be in complete denial that the meat they eat was once a sentient being, and I find that a form of convenient hypocrasy. So was intrigued to see that even those who paid astronomical sums to go and live in Italy and cook from the local markets wouldn't have considered in advance the possibility that they would be going back to literal basics! She did describe one attendee who was anorexic, and who's idea of eating was to cut a tube of macaroni into 4, and eat one quarter and then declare themselves full. And there was someone else who ate very little, and when she enquired as to why, he said he didn't like the taste of olive oil. You do wonder about what goes on in peoples heads sometimes, and why they would bother going to all the trouble and expense to attend.

She ended up in Venice, doing cookschools at The Cipriano, and then later in an appartment that they bought. Venice was a city her husband had always wanted to live in - and I've just tried to go on Amazon to get a copy of the book they wrote there," Marcella Cucina", which apparently includes magnificent photos of a city that I think is truly extraordinary, but the only one currently available is thru a second hand dealer who doesn't ship internationally - so will have to think of another approach...  Once she got too frail to negotiate the streets, they moved to Florida. When we went to Cork at the end of our French trip, we stayed with Darina Allen at Ballymaloe, and when she and Tim joined us for dinner at Ballymaloe House, they were late, becos they'd missed a connecting flight coming back from Venice, when they'd been invited to be part of the Hazans farewell celebrations to that city. I was so impressed by such connections that I was temporarily overawed and struck dumb. It passed however! Marzella mentions Darina in the book and going to Cork - and how Darina came to her classes. Thats one of the things that did impress me, is the degree to which food people travel around attending classes that other food people do, all part of the assumption that you always have something to learn, I guess.

As with some of the other memoirs that I have read, it is a fascinating insight into what propelled people to achieve what they did in their lives, and always interesting to note what is the result of serendipity and what comes down to careful planning. Interesting too, is the descriptions of people that I've read about previously, sometimes complimentary and sometimes not so. Relationships come and go in life, and true friends are a real and special commodity. We all  have to learn  at some stage, that not everyone operates from the same book as us - and that incompatibility can sometimes take awhile to work its way to the surface. At other times it can be immediately apparent that someone is trying to climb onto your coat tails, and use your brand, knowledge or connections to their advantage. She is very upfront about such people. I have previously written about Judith Jones book, The Tenth Muse, a book I loved. She was the first book editor to see the potential in Julia Childs and was instrumental in her being published in the 60's, and thru Julia was introduced to Marcella, but their relationship turned acriminious, and I've now read two quite different versions of why things went sour. Richard Olney was another who met all the famous food people - James Beard and Julia and Craig Clairborne, and managed to puncture one or two obviously overinflated pictures I had built up about these people. 

 When we were going thru a particularly difficult period with my parents who were our business partners in the early years of Somerset, it used to stagger me how the 4 of us could have a meeting and becos of the degree of conflict amongst us, take away quite contrary interpretations of what was meant to have been said during that meeting. Happens everywhere I guess. Where there is conflict, there is always going to be different selfserving interpretations. Some of it can sound quite bitchy and I do wonder why it has to go on the record, becos it doesn't achieve anything after all these years, I would have thought. I amaze myself sometimes by reading back over certain periods in my diaries and realising that the memories I carry have taken on quite a different hue to the tone I was writing in back whenever. We edit stuff for our own purposes, which is why you can end up with one set of facts but two different interpretations of what happened. 

She truly is an icon however - and represents so much the very best in cooking. The background, the history, the knowledge  and the realness of her life experiences, all of which can be a little chavinistic in interpretation,  in the sense of  a very literal, 'I'm right and therefore you are wrong!', stance of anyone who dared to query her interpretation of Italian cooking,  but I've never really had a problem with people who have passionate viewpoints, and for her it all comes down to how the food should taste. The Italians used lots of fat, and just becos that may have jarred with American sensibilities in the 70's she wasn't going to change to accomodate what she saw as a ridiculous pandering to nonsense. There should be no shortcuts in the creation of good food, and with that I agree wholeheartedly.