Do You Know Elizabeth David?
An ode to one of our greatest food writers. Another to her favorite food writer. Vintage menus she would have loved. A recipe. And time traveling on the radio.
Last week I mentioned that I’m the kind of cook who prefers recipes to be suggestions rather than marching orders. What I meant, of course, is that I’m an Elizabeth David kind of cook.
It makes me sad that Elizabeth David is not better known in this country, so I was thrilled 15 years ago when Dan Halpern of Ecco Press asked me to write the introduction to At Elizabeth David’s Table; like many ardent fans before me, I was hoping this would be the book that finally made Americans pay attention to the woman who was for England, Julia Child, MFK Fisher and Chuck Williams rolled into one. (By this I mean she was an inspirational cooking teacher, a great writer and the proprietor of a revolutionary cookware shop.)
Sigh, this book didn’t make a larger impact than the ones that went before. Perhaps the next book will do it.
(Apologies for the quality of this excerpt; I seem to have given away all my copies of the book and this is an old scan. Also, as the daughter of a book designer I can’t help noting that the type line is far too long, which does not make for easy reading.)
One of the people Elizabeth David loved best was Edouard de Pomiane, a scientist who was also a passionate cook. She wrote the introduction to the English version of La Cuisine en 10 Minutes (I included it in the reprint for the Modern Library Food series). I too am enamored of de Pomiane, who has an astonishing ability to demystify the science of the kitchen, and over the years I’ve bought every vintage copy of his books I could get my hands on.
This is an image from his Vingt Plats qui Donnent La Goutte, an odd little book about twenty great French dishes. The dishes… bouillabaisse, cassoulet, veal kidneys, eel stew, quiche, a fat carp cooked in the oven…. are great - but the illustrations are even better. This one is, of course, coq au vin.
De Pomiane does seem to inspire great art; here are a few different versions of his books.
That last book is transcripts from De Pomiane’s weekly radio show, which was probably the first cooking show every broadcast over the airwaves. Radio Cuisine was on every Friday night in France from 1923 to 1929, and I’ve always wished I could hear it.
Now we all can. The delightfully quirky culinary publishing house, Fretin (their website is in both French and English), has resurrected 200 of the shows. What a thrill it is, traveling through time to listen to a show that is more than a hundred years old; every time I listen to Radio Cuisine I think how much Elizabeth David would have liked it.
One of my favorite Elizabeth David books is An Omelette and a Glass of Wine, a collection of her journalism from the forties to the sixties. Here’s one sentence that particularly delights me:
“I can only say that there are times when one positively craves for something totally unsensational; the meals in which every dish is an attempted or even a successful tour de force are always a bit of a trial.”
A little bit later I came upon her recipe for an extremely unsensational chick pea salad. You could, of course, make this even easier by using a can of chick peas (although you won’t have the broth to make soup).
Elizabeth David’s Salade de Pois Chiches
Soak 1/2 lb. of chick peas overnight in plenty of cold water into which you stir a tablespoon of flour. Next day put them in a saucepan with the same water, plus a half teaspoon of baking soda. Simmer them for an hour. Skim and strain.
Rinse out the saucepan, fill it with 3 pints fresh water, bring to the boil, add a tablespoon of salt, put in the chick peas and simmer another 1 to 2 hours until the peas are perfectly tender and the skins beginning to break.
Strain them (keep the liquid - it will make a good basis for a vegetable soup), put them in a bowl and while still hot stir in plenty of olive oil, sliced onion, garlic, parsley and a little vinegar.
Chez Panisse has always been an Elizabeth David kind of place. I think she would have loved every one of these menus from 1983 - as well as the menus Alice Waters was serving 33 years later.
Apologies for cutting off the bottom. The Saturday dessert was crepes with fresh fig ice cream.
For some reason I copied down the Chez Panisse menus for the week of March 14, 2016. Ms. David would have loved these too.
Monday, March, 14
$75
Grilled shrimp with sauce mousseline; asparagus, endive, and chervil salad
Boeuf carbonnade à la flamande: Stemple Creek Ranch beef short ribs braised with onions and beer with carrots, turnips, and herbed noodles
Hazelnut, tangerine, and chocolate sherbets with citrus tuile
Tuesday, March 15
$100
Pennyroyal Farm goat cheese soufflé with pickled beets, asparagus, and herb salad Pan-roasted black cod with carrot purée and picholine olive, preserved lemon, and coriander salsa
Grilled rack, loin, and leg of Full Belly Farm lamb with crispy new potatoes, cardoon and chard gratin, and harissa
Orange-cardamom ice cream with Lindsey’s almond cake and Page mandarins
Wednesday, March 16
$100
Cannard Farm asparagus and leeks with mustard vinaigrette and rocket blossom fritters
Seared sea scallops with nettle risotto and crispy pancetta
Grilled breast and braised leg of Sonoma County duck with roasted artichokes, new potatoes, sautéed spinach, and escarole
Blood orange and grapefruit sorbetti with tangerine granita
Thursday, March 17
$100
Smoked black cod and asparagus salad with anise hyssop and red and golden beet relish
Sheep’s-milk ricotta gnocchi with sweet peas, Pecorino, and sage
Wolfe Ranch quail grilled with myrtle; with artichoke gratin, Bob’s watercress, and Marsala wine sauce
Toasted almond parfait and mandarin sorbetto meringata
Friday, March 18
$125
Local halibut and yellowtail jack tartare with ginger, silver lime, and red celery salad Sweet pea and sorrel agnolotti in wild mushroom brodo
Llano Seco Ranch pork loin grilled with sage; with parsnip puree, purple peacock kale, and mustard seed sauce
Citrus millefoglie
Saturday, March 19
$125
Cape Cod sea scallop and fennel salad with Valencia oranges, cilantro flowers, and garden cress
Asparagus and celery root soups with wild mushroom croûton
Grilled Watson Ranch lamb rack, loin, and leg with Béarnaise sauce, sautéed new potatoes, and snap peas
Bittersweet chocolate fondant with walnut ice cream and nocino caramel
Thank you, Ruth. You’ve, once again, hit a tender spot. Elizabeth David is but one of many reasons why, at age 85, I'm unwilling to whittle down my treasured tomes. My library, incidentally, includes five (maybe more) Reichl titles, beginning with your 1972 "....mmmmm A Feastiary." My brain exercise comes not with Sudoku puzzles in Assisted Living who-knows-where, but by triggering strong memories the mere sight of each cover evokes. These covers bind not merely recipes (many with kitchen stains and marginal notes) but memories of how, why, when and where I acquired the book. Just yesterday, I opened the first cookbook I ever knew: leatherette-covered 1936 Household Searchlight Recipe Book with its unique twenty-size tabs. It fell open to page 185 where "Seven-Minute Icing" carried me back to our Iowa farm kitchen where I could hear the sounds when bent blades of Mom's "eggbeater" (with its chipped red-painted handle), hit metal sides of our dented Wear-Ever aluminum double boiler acquired at a traveling salesman's demonstration supper. She and I took turns licking the blades after we frosted the still-warm devil's food cake. Then I yelled “supper’s ready” to call my dad and four brothers to join us at the kitchen table.
i read every word of what you wrote and so enjoyed it. i have well over a thousand cookbooks but sadly not hers. i am donating most of my books to Cambridge Culinary School library but i would have kept her! thank you for sharing this.