America's Best Home Cook

Marion Cunningham saved my life, made me laugh and taught me half of what I know. A fantastic lost recipe she rescued. Vintage menus just for her. And a great book.

Just after I started writing for New West Magazine, the assistant, Vicky, who more or less ran the place, handed me an invitation.

“I’m giving this to you,” she said, “because you like and food and you’ll probably find this interesting. It’s a party for James Beard at some rich guy’s apartment on Russian Hill. Why don’t you go? You might get a story and even if you don’t, the food will be fabulous.”

To be honest, I don’t remember the food. What I remember is the people. I knew nobody in those elegant rooms with their astonishing views of San Francisco Bay, and I was intimidated by the company. I was in my twenties, and with my shabby clothes and wild hair I looked totally out of place: I was the youngest person there by at least thirty years.

Then a tiny man with a clipped English accent tugged on my elbow and began chatting me up in a kindly manner. After we’d exchanged small talk I asked what he did. “Oh,” he said diffidently, “I work for a milk company.” Years later, when he invited me to the Barrel Tasting he organized every year at The Four Seasons Restaurant, I learned that I’d been talking to the celebrated wine authority, Gerald Asher. (His Mosswood Wine Company was then owned by McKesson Dairy.)

Gerald waved an extraordinarily beautiful older woman over. She stared at me with deep blue eyes and found out everything about me in ten intense minutes. When she learned that I lived in a commune, Marion Cunningham laughed, took my arm and waltzed me around the room, introducing me to all the important people. Chuck Williams, Carol Field, Bill Jayme (he pretty much invented direct mail advertising)….. Finally she said, “and now you must meet James,” as she led me up to Mr. Beard.

In later years I spent a lot of time with James Beard because Marion was his assistant, but at the time I was so intimidated that I searched desperately for something to say. Finally I blurted out, “I just love your tomato pie!” He turned a jaundiced eye on me. “Oh really,” he drawled, as he looked away in search of more interesting company.

“I shouldn’t have left you alone with him,” said a chagrinned Marion when she rescued me. “He’s much nicer to the boys.”

But it was the beginning of the conversation Marion and I were to have for the rest of her life. She called the next day to invite me to dinner, and when I reciprocated by inviting her to join us at the long table in our shabby commune I began to worry. What would she think of us? Most of the people she knew would have been horrified by our scruffy group, but Marion was enchanted and insisted on visiting us again and again.

As our friendship developed Marion became the person I called whenever I was troubled or in trouble. She always showed up. Later, when I’d moved on to the New York Times we began taking an annual eating trip to Paris. And no matter how far apart we happened to be living, for many years we spoke on an almost daily basis.

Not a day goes by that I don’t miss Marion, and last week, when I suddenly found this lost recipe from early in our friendship, I was unbelievably happy. She gave it to me in the late seventies when she was testing it for the Fannie Farmer Cookbook (for some reason she did not include it), and I made it many times because I loved the mysteriously cheesy flavor of the bread. Then I misplaced it in one of my moves. By then Marion was gone and I could never find another recipe nearly as good as this one.

And suddenly last week, it magically appeared in a forgotten box in the basement.

Like a gift.

This is a photograph I took on the way to Marion’s birthday lunch at The New Boonville Hotel in 1983. (I wrote about the restaurant here.)

That’s Marion on the left. (She worked at a gas station during WWII and delighted in pumping her own gas). Next to her is the late Judy Rodgers (I wrote about her here), John Hudspeth, Stephen Singer and Alice Waters.

What I remember is a fairly harrowing ride north from Berkeley, twisting along the fierce Pacific coast for what seemed like hours; Alice was pregnant and we kept having to pull over. When we finally got to the restaurant lunch was far from ready. We waited. And waited some more. Nothing ever happened quickly at The New Boonville Hotel. But in the end, the meal was well worth waiting for. It did, indeed, vaut le voyage.

An aside: when Dave and Sally Schmitt sold The French Laundry to Thomas Keller, they bought The Apple Farm in the Anderson Valley and created another remarkable food space. And for many years Johnny Schmitt and their nephew Perry Hoffman have run The Boonville Hotel and Restaurant, just down the road.

The following year Alice celebrated Marion’s birthday with this menu:

If you’re interested in the tomato pie recipe that so bored James Beard, here it is. It may not be a sophisticated dish, but I still love this American classic- and it’s the perfect time of year to make it.

James Beard’s Tomato Pie
Begin by making biscuit dough. (I like buttermilk biscuits for this recipe, although any biscuit will do – even the ones in the freezer case of your supermarket.)

2 cups flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup butter.
Chopped parsley
3/4 cups buttermilk.
4-6 ripe tomatoes, thickly sliced.
salt
pepper.
2 tablespoons shredded basil
1 1/2 cups mayonnaise
1 cup grated Cheddar

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Combine the dry ingredients.

Cut in the butter with two knives or a pastry blender until it is the size of peas. Add the chopped parsley (mostly because it looks pretty). Mix in the buttermilk until the dough holds together, turn onto a floured surface and knead for a few minutes. Pat it into the bottom and sides of a 9 inch pie pan.

Cover the biscuits with the sliced tomatoes. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Shower a couple of tablespoons of shredded basil on top.

Mix the mayonnaise with the grated cheese and spread the mixture on top.

Bake at 375 for about 35 minutes, or until it is golden brown.

I love all of Marion’s books; her The Breakfast Book is a special favorite.

But if you know someone who doesn’t know how to cook, give them Learning to Cook with Marion Cunningham.

When Marion decided to write the book she put up notices all over her neighborhood offering free cooking classes. for novices. “I’m learning so much!” she told me. “It never occurred to me how mysterious the language of cooking can be. I asked one of my students to toss the salad and to my surprise he put the bowl on the table, walked across the room and began throwing the ingredients into it.”

She laughed before adding, “I was stunned. And then I had to admit it made sense.”