by Luke Barr
Dear James Beard,
I have just read your review of the French Menu Cookbook, which pleased me immensely. I felt, while reading it, that you were absolutely sincere. It is rather delicate to attempt to thank someone for having said what he feels—please accept the expression of my gratitude for feeling it.
The tight little world of American gastronomic journalism is, as I understand it, highly competitive and newcomers are not always welcomed with open arms. In view of that, I feel that I may, indeed, thank you wholeheartedly for your generosity in expressing publicly those thoughts that others might have jealously guarded for themselves.…
I hope that, the next time you are in France, we may meet.
Sincerely,
Richard Olney
And so, over the course of a few weeks in 1970, they all arrived in Provence.
As planned, M.F. and her sister set up house in early November in the tiny town of La Roquette-sur-Siagne. At the beginning of December, James Beard checked in at the diet clinic in Grasse. Simone Beck returned from the book tour in the United States to her family estate in Plascassier later that month, and Julia and Paul Child, also in Plascassier, prepared to open La Pitchoune to their many guests. Their new book was already a hit, but Child and Beck were tired, their friendship fraying. Over in Solliès-Toucas, meanwhile, the brilliant and reclusive Olney had come back from his brief trip to Paris. And finally, just before Christmas, cookbook editor Judith Jones and her husband, Evan, arrived.
During the late fall and winter of 1970, they all lived together as neighbors in the most beautiful place in the world. Provence was where it had all started. It was a place that epitomized the food-centered culture and philosophy the group stood for, a place where life and cooking and style all intertwined so easily. The farmers’ markets, the heat and sun and abundance all around, the wild and slightly disheveled gardens and fantastic sproutings of rosemary, thyme, and lavender. The elegant but simple outdoor entertaining. The old tumbledown farmhouses.
Provence was also the place, not coincidentally, where American cooking would first break with France, where its modern character would begin to reveal itself.
4
AN EPIC DINNER with RICHARD OLNEY
RICHARD OLNEY WAS PREPARING A FEAST.
He sat at the kitchen table with a small, pointy knife, painstakingly piercing each large piece of beef stew meat and inserting small strips of pork fat into the incisions. The strips of pork belly had been covered with a paste of chopped parsley and garlic, and would add flavor to the meat from the inside out. He put the larded meat in a bowl, poured a bit of olive oil and cognac and then a bottle of dry white wine over it, and left it all to marinate.
This was the beginning of his daube à la provençale, a slow-cooking and unimpeachably moist and tender stew, with a rich sauce to accompany the macaroni he planned to serve with it. Eda Lord and Sybille Bedford were coming to dinner the next day, and they were bringing their friend M. F. K. Fisher.
It was late November and raining outside. He was alone in the kitchen. He was happiest at moments like this.
Now he took on the terrine, a delicate operation. Laid out on the counter were two sole and a large bag of small sea urchins, all from the fishmonger in Toulon. The sea urchins were still alive, their black spines moving. He filleted the fish, and started a stock with the bones, pouring over water and wine. It would cook for hours, until it had thickened to a jelly-like substance he would use to coat the terrine the next day.
He used scissors to open up dozens of sea urchins, holding the sharp, spiny shells in a folded dish towel to avoid injury to himself, and spooning out the pungent and slightly spongy roe inside. They smelled of the ocean. He combined the vivid orange roe with a small amount of uncooked, chopped white fish, then pushed the mixture through a fine sieve, one tablespoon at a time. These were the first ingredients in what would become a mousseline, a very delicate foamlike mousse that would be surrounded by the sole fillets.
This was the sort of dish in which most of the ingredients were forced through a sieve—some more than once. It took time and patience.
After putting the roe and fish through the sieve, he chopped some pistachios, whisked together some cream and egg, combined everything in a bowl, then spooned the mixture into a heavy terrine dish, which he had lined with the fillets. He folded the sole over the mousse filling to create a loaf, and dabbed more of the mousse around the edges and the top. Now he lifted the dish and banged it on the counter to settle the contents, then put it in the oven, where it would cook gently in a bain-marie, half-submerged in water. When the sole was done, Olney would press the terrine under a one-pound weight as it cooled, then refrigerate it.
To accompany the sole and sea urchin dish, he had decided to make a second mousse, of sorrel. He sautéed the sorrel greens with jellied meat stock, forced the mixture through the sieve, added whipped cream, and spread it into a mold. This went into the refrigerator alongside the sole terrine, both of which he would unmold some hours before the dinner was to be served.
Olney was a classicist and perfectionist. He insisted on the freshest ingredients, many of which he grew in his garden. He had endless patience for the complicated, time-consuming processes of la grande cuisine française—witness the extreme refinement of the urchin roe mousseline he had just prepared, for example. Fewer and fewer cooks, even at the best restaurants, were doing these preparations anymore, at least not properly. And yet even as he remained committed to the canon of classical haute cuisine, he also embraced more rustic traditions. He grilled lamb on an open fire, and loved braises, boiled meats, and tripe—traditional provincial dishes. He had no patience for fussy presentations, food decorations, or the flavor-sapping trickery and shortcuts of many professional kitchens.
Take artichokes: he grew them in his garden—the small, purple Provençal variety called poivrade—and planned to serve them the next day as a first course, with a vinaigrette. The textbook preparation, aimed at producing perfectly white artichoke hearts, called for precooking them in acidulated water with a bit of flour and oil, producing a taste both banal and, to his palate, perverted—the actual flavor of the artichoke lost.
He would rub the easily discolored artichokes with lemon and cook them in saltwater with a branch of thyme. And yes, they would look a bit gray in the end, that’s how it was. But they would taste like artichoke.
He poured himself a scotch and sat at the dining table smoking Gauloises cigarettes, taking a few notes about the menu he’d serve the next day, including which wines would go with which courses. He planned to write about the meal for Cuisine et Vins de France, a small but influential culinary magazine to which he regularly contributed. He needed two whites and two reds, so he left the house and went to his wine cellar, hidden behind a door to what looked like a tiny garden shed, underneath a persimmon tree in his garden. He unlocked the metal door and walked down the narrow stairs into the dark. There was no light. He switched on a small flashlight to reveal the wines: row upon row of dusty bottles, set on the heavy wood-and-brick shelves he himself had built after he dug the cellar. It had taken him six years to complete the cellar.
It was his buried treasure, a growing collection of Yquems, Domain Tempiers, champagnes, and more—all wines he had written about and collected. He took his time choosing a white Burgundy from the Côtes de Nuits, a Sauternes, and two Bordeaux.
The next day, Olney layered the stew into an earthenware pot: bits of pork rind, the marinated beef, tomatoes, carrots, onions, mushrooms, olives, and herbs. After pouring the marinade and some beef stock over the stew, he carefully sealed the lid, using a long, thin strip of cloth soaked in water and flour, and put the pot in the oven, where it would cook at a low temperature for five hours.
As the daube cooked, Olney began the arduous process of covering the unmolded sole and sea urchin terrine with the fish jelly, which involved painting the terrine with layer after layer of the gelatinous fish stock, putting the terrine bac
k in the refrigerator between each coating of the jelly, to let it set into an aspic, and then repeating. The key was for the jelly to achieve a trembling, just-solid consistency that would melt upon eating.
He picked the small purple artichokes and rocket greens from his garden, and waited for his guests.
At around four o’clock that afternoon, M.F., Lord, and Bedford arrived for dinner in Solliès-Toucas. The afternoon drive had been beautiful, two hours along the new Nice autoroute, passing through little towns with narrow streets and shady squares and stone fountains. They parked in the town square and made their way slowly up to Olney’s house, which was on a steep ravine overlooking the village. The climb, along a narrow, twisting path and up a series of ancient stairs, was difficult. This had all once been a limestone quarry and they passed sheer rock cliffs, caves, and an abandoned mill on the way. It was slow going, the footing dangerous.
The house was magnificent. It had been built in 1859 and bought by Olney as an abandoned wreck for about two thousand dollars. In the early 1960s, he had repaired the roof, put in plumbing, and built an enormous stone fireplace. He constructed the wine cellar. He’d done most of the work himself. There was a wide tiled terrace and an herb and vegetable garden in front, and behind the house, a series of ancient walled terraces planted with olive trees.
The three women admired the view and caught their breath, and Lord introduced her two old friends, Olney and M.F. Olney took them into the house and poured glasses of white wine. The front door opened directly into a tall kitchen, at the center of which was a large fireplace. Cast iron, copper, and earthenware pots and pans lined the mantel and hung from the wall above the fire.
There were books everywhere, and a number of Olney’s oil portraits and still lifes were on the walls. He was dressed in a loose, open shirt with the sleeves rolled up and had dark, swept-back hair. Dinner was simmering in the oven.
Lord had met Olney years earlier, in the mid-1950s, in Paris. He had moved to France after a few years as a painter in Greenwich Village, and taught himself to cook. He and Lord had in common a sense of being outsiders: they were both gay, for one thing, and expats, for another. Lord adored Olney in a protective and understanding way. She was more than twenty years older than he was, but it didn’t matter, they were close.
M.F. hadn’t particularly wanted to come, but was glad she had—she liked Olney immediately. They sat at a table in the kitchen, in front of the fireplace. It was set casually, with dish towels used as napkins.
APÉRITIF: MOREY-SAINT-DENIS “MONTS LUISANTS” BLANC
1966
ARTICHOKES POIVRADE
ROULADE OF SOLE FILLETS
WITH A MOUSSELINE OF SEA URCHINS IN ASPIC
SORREL MOUSSE
CHTEAU FILHOT 1962
DAUBE À LA PROVENÇALE WITH A MACARONADE
CHTEAU CARBONNIEUX 1966
ROCKET SALAD
SELECTION OF CHEESES
VIEUX CHTEAU CERTAN 1964
RASPBERRY SORBET
All the dishes were impressive and beautiful. When Olney cut slices of the two terrines onto their plates, the food looked like abstract works of art.
They raised their glasses of sweet and delicate Sauternes. And now began a long discussion about food and wine, and about how and when and whether they went together, or didn’t. Olney was deeply knowledgeable on the subject. His just-released cookbook placed great emphasis not only on seasonality but on the proper flow of a menu, from course to course. It presented wine recommendations for nearly every recipe.
They all knew that Sauternes was traditionally a dessert wine, and sweet. On the other hand, it had the quality and complexity to stand up to foie gras, another traditional pairing. Olney was intrigued by the notion of serving Sauternes with something as delicate as the sole roulade. It worked, they all agreed; the pairing was inspired.
But the sorrel mousse, which he had served with the sole, was a mistake, Olney declared. Its sharp, lemony flavor was too strong: “It killed both the Sauternes and the marvelous, delicate, sweet flavor of the urchin mousse.”
They debated this point and ate more of the sole, the urchin mousse, the sorrel mousse, and drank more of the Château Filhot. It was an excellent ’62. Olney and Bedford compared notes on the various vintages they knew, which varied depending on how well the “noble rot” had taken hold that year. (“Noble rot” referred to the fungus that grew on ripe grapes, crucial for making certain sweet wines.) The year 1966 had been a bad one for the rot. The ’64s were splendid.
M.F. listened to this conversation smiling and nodding, enjoying the wine very much, and the food, too. But she noticed in herself a growing impatience for this sort of talk, for the rarified and studiously opinionated banter about wine pairings and menu design, which at some level, to her ear, always ended up sounding self-congratulatory.
It was odd: Olney seemed on the one hand so unorthodox and bohemian, and on the other so beholden to the grand culinary traditions, the old order.
He dressed and lived like an artist, he talked like a snob, and he cooked like a genius.
Nevertheless, M.F. could tell that he was onto the beginnings of something new. Yes, he was a classicist and traditionalist—full of extravagant reverence for the old ways. And it wasn’t as if he were an inventor of novel flavors or new techniques. But he was imbuing his cooking with what seemed a wholly new style, M.F. thought. It was evident in his person, his kitchen, his house—the unbuttoned shirt, the hard-won renovation of the building, the oil paintings on the walls, and of course the food on the table. Though the dishes were all classics, some of them were exceedingly refined and elaborate (the various mousses in aspic), others far more rustic (the stew in the oven), and he was not at all afraid to serve them in the same meal, a kind of high-low montage that was his signature. Each dish, no matter how humble, was given its due and presented as a paragon of craftsmanship, an object of veneration. Rejecting white tablecloth formality, Olney seemed to embody a kind of rough-hewn philosophy of taste—informal in presentation, rigorously seasonal, devoted in an almost religious way to the essential flavors of the ingredients.
Was it possible that only an American could have distilled the French experience, and French cooking, in this way? M.F. wondered. She, too, had embraced France with the fervor of a convert all those years ago, and she, too, had arrived at something that was uniquely her own. Different from Olney’s, but just as idiosyncratic and personal.
For Olney, cooking and eating were part of an expat-bohemian way of life. Indeed, the romance of the life Olney led infused his writing and gave it an almost hyperbolic sense of authenticity and authority. For every recipe, Olney provided the definitive, uncompromising version—obsessively detailed, brilliantly described.
So here he was, an American in Provence, preparing to serve what might possibly be the best daube à la provençale ever made, in a house he had renovated more or less by hand. This was a place and a life he had willed into being. He was also on his way, it seemed, to inventing a new kind of snobbery, based not on the prestige of rare and expensive ingredients but on the nuances of flavor.
Were his guests ready for the next course?
Olney had taken the daube from the oven and, using a knife, broken the seal he’d made with the strip of cloth, then removed the lid.
This sort of seal, he explained, was an old French country cooking tradition dating back to the days when the dish would have been cooked overnight, buried in hot ashes in the fireplace.
A quick rush of fragrant steam escaped. There was something inexplicably satisfying about this seal-cracking operation—it was one of those fleeting, thrilling cooking moments, like pouring wine on a hot pan to deglaze it. The smell was magical. He skimmed off the fat that was floating on the surface and then spooned some of the liquid over the pasta and let it simmer for a few minutes on the stove. He then layered it into a casserole dish with grated parmesan and Gruyère, and set it on the table, next to the daube, still in its daubi�
�re cooking pot.
He opened a bottle of Bordeaux—the Château Carbonnieux. For a moment, they were all transfixed by the wine. M.F. thought it was stellar. But Olney wasn’t sure and said it tasted a bit off. This was a subtle point, though, and they continued drinking the wine as they talked about it.
The large pieces of beef stew were fork-tender and melted in the mouth. Every so often someone encountered a tiny pocket of the chopped parsley and crushed garlic Olney had carefully inserted the previous day. The macaronade (pasta) carried the faintest hint of nutmeg. This was perfection.
It was getting late. Olney’s guests ate a salad of the peppery rocket and other lettuces he had harvested from his garden just a few hours before. For the vinaigrette, Olney had used olive oil from a local mill and an aromatic vinegar cooked down with garlic and herbs and preserved in a jug. He made his own vinegar every so often and compared the vintages as if they were wines.
They opened another Bordeaux, this one indisputably excellent, a Pomerol from Vieux Château Certan. Olney brought out a selection of cheeses—a fresh goat cheese, a creamy Reblochon, and some Gruyère.
The conversation wandered a bit, and M.F. was glad of the change. She and Olney talked about his paintings—she admired the portraits and still lifes, which had “real radiance,” she said (though she did inwardly wince at some of their visual clichés: the checked tablecloth, the mortar and pestle, the bottle of wine). M.F. had strong feelings about art, and was knowledgeable about it. Dillwyn Parrish had been a painter, his work hanging on the walls of her house in St. Helena. Now it was boxed up and ready to be moved to the new house being built in Glen Ellen.
Paul Child was likewise an accomplished painter, and M.F. adored his work, she told Olney. Had he seen it?