Provence, 1970

It was a Sunday evening in mid-December, and Julia and Paul Child were awaiting their dinner guests, M.F. and Beard. They had urged M.F. to bring her friends Eda Lord and Sybille Bedford, too. So, they would be six.
      Why had she brought such an enormous chicken? Child wondered. It sat on the counter looking rather larger, somehow, than it had at the butcher's.  She'd done shopping that morning in Plascassier and Grasse, to the excellent Boussageon for meat and various charcuterie items, and to Madame Londi's, her favorite fruit and vegetable shop. She found Boussageon's pate to be fine and carefully flavored. In Cannes the previous day, she and Paul had walked along the narrow rue Meynadier, with its many food and specialty shops selling cheese, chocolate and macaroons, fish, game and quiche; and of course an endless selection of Provencal dishware, gifts, and handbags. She ended up buying a smoked salmon that was the biggest she'd ever seen -- almost three feet long!
      She would serve the chicken and some potatoes, and set out some of the prepared dishes, along with fresh bread. She would make a salad. This would be an easy dinner -- a casual affair. There would be something simple for dessert.
      James Beard arrived early and was soon poking around the kitchen with her. He would make a soup, he said. He began washing and chopping a large amount of chard he had found in her refrigerator.
      Child and Beard loved cooking together, and had even given themselves a joint nickname a few years earlier: Gigi, a combination of their names (or, at least, the Js in their first names, as pronounced in French). It was silly, of course, but that was the point. The Gigis were in the kitchen, they would say. She wore a bright flower-patterned dress, and he had matched her with an equally colorful bow tie. ...
      The sun was setting and the sky was dark as Paul, bottles of Bordeaux in hand, heard Eda Lord's VW bug sputter up the steep unpaved driveway. He waved as Lord pulled in next to his rented Renault. She emerged with Bedford and M.F., all of them shutting doors and calling hellos.
      Julia opened the side door directly to the kitchen, and she and Paul welcomed them in. Paul took the corkscrew from its hook on the Peg-board kitchen wall and opened the wine. The kitchen smelled wonderful, and they all offered to help -- arranging some of the smoked salmon and pate on plates, setting the table, stringing beans. Dinner at La Pitchoune was a communal affair. Julia presided in the kitchen in her apron, towering over her guests. Everyone pitched in.

from Provence, 1970, M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and
the Reinvention of American Taste, by Luke Barr

There's something about this time of year (all the foodie magazines?  the foodie holidays?  the cold, dark nights?) that makes me feel drawn to food writing, even more than usual. I was reading a great foodie book about this time last year (and I've just been re-listening to it as an audiobook).  And an equally great one about this time three years ago. This book is a wonderful addition to the tradition; I liked it very much.

Luke Barr is a magazine editor and the grand-nephew of M.F.K. Fisher (he has based this book, in part, on a diary he found in his cousin's stash of family archives). He remembers visiting his great aunt in Sonoma when he was a child, and a meal that she served {'...the dense and meaty grilled chicken drumsticks with watercress and homemade pickles... Or they may have been drumsticks from some other, smaller bird -- I remember they were tiny and delicate, a little bit sweet. I loved them.'}, and her praising him for being a slow eater. He also describes bringing his 90-year-old grandmother {M.F.K.F's younger sister, Norah} to Provence, to revisit some of the places the sisters had been to together.

But this isn't really a family story. After reading the diary that he found, the author decided to write about a few months, in the late fall and winter of 1970, when several of the most prominent American food writers -- M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, Richard Olney, Judith and Evan Jones (Child's and Fisher's editor and her husband), and Richard Olney -- found themselves in Provence together at a turning point in their feelings about French cooking, France, American cooking, cookbooks, recipes and food in general.

M.F.K. Fisher has traveled to France with her sister; she is 65, about to finish a memoir about her childhood in California and thinking deeply about where and how she should live. She enjoys her time with the Childs and with Beard, but she is disenchanted with the food snobbery she finds in Olney and other friends and escapes, by herself, to cold, closed-up Arles to think and write.  Julia and Paul Child are at La Pitchoune, their house in Provence; Julia has just finished the second volume of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and knows that her now-difficult collaboration with Simone Beck is at an end. They worry about their friend James Beard, who is finally finishing his long book on American cookery, but is dangerously overweight and ill, and they find themselves admiring Richard Olney's books on French cooking but disliking him personally (he hopes M.F. will write about him for The New Yorker, but seems disdainful of her and her friends). There are debates (and good, old-fashioned, delicious. nasty sniping) about what is authentically, traditionally, truly French and what is not, and about who is a better cook. And there are menus and long descriptions of the meals they cook for each other.

Who can know how history actually happens. where or when exactly an idea takes root, or wilts away? In December of 1970, the seminal figures of modern American cooking -- M.F., Julia Child, Simone Beck, James Beard, Judith Jones and Richard Olney -- found themselves together in the south of France. They could feel their world was changing. Indeed, they themselves had set many of the changes in motion. ...
      The gathering happened more or less by accident, but at a particularly combustible moment ... and they would each be making choices about how to move forward. ...The small group gathered there was the tightly wound nucleus around which all others orbited in the insular, still clubby world of food and cooking in 1970. And while it would be folly to argue that they alone determined the future direction and sensibility of American cooking, their encounters in Provence, in rustic home kitchens, on stone terraces overlooking olive groves, in local restaurants, and at the ubiquitous farmers' markets in the surrounding countryside, provide a unique, up-close view of the push and pull of history and personality, of a new world in the making.

No Man's Nightingale

..and then his thoughts went back to Thora Kilmartin's letter. Not so much to the letter as to his abstracting it without a word to Burden or to any police officer, abstracting it moreover from a crime scene. Guilt wasn't a feeling with which he was very familiar, but he recognized it when he had it. It wasn't just the guilt that troubled him but the necessity of confessing his offence to Burden, It was necessary, he had to do it, but he could hardly think of anything he wanted to do less. In the past, Burden had confessed his mistakes and lapses to him, he was the appropriate person, the superior officer. Now their roles were reversed or almost. There was no way out. To ignore it, to forget the letter, was unthinkable. Not only should Burden and his team meet Thora Kilmartin and talk to her, want to meet her and talk to her, but to withhold that letter and pretend it didn't exist was the kind of act that made him feel -- in a phrase he had always despised, when others used it -- unable to live with himself
      Dora and Sylvia came downstairs, announced that tea would soon be coming, and looked at him as if they had expected him to be asleep.

My PBS station is running endless pledge promotions for Downton Abbey, and in one of them, they say something like 'We're sure you'll want to tune in to see how your favorite characters are doing,' It's hokey, but it's also true, isn't it? As mysteries go, this is a very wistful, almost sweet book, as Wexford thinks about how his life has changed and works to adjust to it.

It's been two years since The Vault {which I especially liked, because of its connection to another book}. As we found out then, Wexford is retired, and has forced himself to finally read all six volumes of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, only to find that he's enjoying it.  Burden still consults with him on cases and brings him to crime scenes, with Wexford hanging back and trying to persuade a young DC to call him by his first name.

Maxine, the Wexford's overly talkative and word-mangling cleaner, has found the new vicar, Sarah Hussain, strangled to death. {As Dora tells him, 'Before you retired you used to have to question possible witnesses, but now people like Maxine come to you. You don't have to ask.'}

'You needn't look like that. People who leave letters lying about are just asking you to read them, is what I say. I can see you want to know what was in them. Well, it was mostly bad language, the F-word and the S-word and even the W-word, though that was a funny one to send to her. 'Call yourself a woman of God?' was in a lot of them, and 'Go back to India.' One day she asked me if I'd ever been married. I thought that was a bit of cheek, considering she knew I'd got four kids. I said no, I hadn't, and had she?  I could tell she didn't like it a bit but if she could ask me, why shouldn't I ask her? 'Yes, I was,' she says. 'He died.' ... And I don't know how to put it, but there was like agony in her face. Well, she went up to the study to write her sermon. And the opportunism like never arose again.'

 Wexford, knowing he must tread carefully, finds himself disagreeing with Burden about suspects, and motives, and how the investigation should be handled.

When I looked at the book's front matter I saw that this is the 24th book in the Inspector Wexford series.  It seems to me that that's what's unique about this genre. When a mystery writer is so good at character development, and brings so many complex elements into her books, maybe even more so in the most well-written standalone novels, you realize that you have spent years getting to know the people she writes about, and in a way the things they go through seem very understandable, and realistic, and real. I think that's where the Downton Abbey effect comes from.

      Now it seemed to him as if he was to be rewarded. A BMW, not the Jaguar that had brought Mrs. Steyner and her son to Sarah Hussain's memorial service and was driven by Timon Arkwright, had been parked outside Carroll House. Its driver, a small, thin man, could just be seen sitting in the driver's seat eating a large sandwich. Wexford had read somewhere that women over fifty pass unnoticed in the street. Could that also be true of men over sixty-five? If the women hated being thus ignored, he would welcome it. Of course it is generally true that police detectives don't want to be seen. He wished he had some reason to go into one of the houses opposite, where he could watch out of a front window, but he had none. Not for the first time but perhaps more positively and tellingly than before, he was realizing how insignificant he had become in the great scheme of law and order, of law-making and law-implementing, of having nothing to do in a society where doing things was all-important.
      But still he waited, standing this time a little down the street outside a huge house, which, from the series of bells by the main entrance, seemed to be divided into flats. In case anyone was watching him -- in the unlikely event -- he put on a small show of impatience, looking at his watch several times and then, as if unable to wait any longer, he took out his mobile phone and made a call.
      Dora spoke rather irritably when he told her what he was doing. 'For heaven's sake, Reg, give it a rest. You're retired.  You don't have to do it anymore' Inspiration came to her aid. 'Gibbon misses you.'
       That made him laugh. 'Tell him I'll soon be back."

Two lovely things I read today ...

1. Fifth Season of Downton Abbey to Air on MASTERPIECE on PBS.
   
2. '...I have finally created a page to track my reading (or, more specifically, my reviewing) of Anthony Trollope and Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire books.'

and, later, something that I watched. It's a tease, really, but it satisfied my curiosity. And I'm warming to the casting of my bookcrush ...

Mastering the Art of French Eating

I'm sorry to whine, but it's been a lonnnng two weeks. I left work two Friday nights ago with my desk {relatively} cleared off and the misguided idea that the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving would be a little less busy than October had been, only to discover on Monday morning that the temp we brought in to help out for three months during a colleague's maternity leave had decided to leave. Without notice. Without even telling us. {Special note to any other job newbie who thinks that making such a grand gesture will get them noticed ... You're right, it will. Everyone will be talking about you. :)}

So it was especially nice to spend a little part of the last two weeks in France. {The part I spent on the bus going to work and coming home, but still.} I was reading, and greatly enjoying, Ann Mah's book Mastering the Art of French Eating:  Lessons in Food and Love from a Year in Paris. I have mixed feelings about most contemporary memoirs, even foodie ones, but this was a good one!

The author is an American of Chinese heritage, in her thirties, a first-time novelist and journalist, married to Calvin, a diplomat whose career takes them, every few years, to a new assignment in a new city.  They are both enamored with France, and thrilled when Calvin gets a coveted assignment in Paris.  A few months after they arrive, though, he is called away to a temporary hardship post in Iraq, meaning that Ann must spend nine months in Paris without him. She's honest about her feelings:  loneliness, rootlessness, homesickness, even a little bitterness about her husband's ambitions and how they affect her opportunities -- all understandable, and thankfully not dwelt on.  Because she also remembers that she is living in Paris, and for a limited time.

She decides to write about some authentic, regional, iconic French dishes, and the places they come from: steak frites in Paris, andouillette (a uniquely scented sausage) in Troyes, crepes in Brittany, salade lyonnaise in Lyon, cassoulet in Toulouse, Castelnaudary, and  Carcassone, choucroute in Alsace, boeuf bourguignon in Burgundy, and aligot {whipped potatoes oozing with cheese} in Aveyron.  {There's a recipe for each one.} She meets people devoted to preserving traditional French foods and ways of cooking them; she spends time with farmers and shepherds, food artisans and chefs; she cooks {when she's allowed to} in French farmhouses; and shares interesting bits of French history and food history.

I liked this one:

The greatest evolution in Lyonnais cuisine occurred during the first half of the twentieth century, with the advent of the Meres Lyonnaises. 'They were often quite fat, with very strong personalities," said Christian. "And they really, really, really knew how to cook."
      The kitchen skills of the meres had their roots in the grand bourgeois homes scattered throughout Lyon. As servants and cooks for these wealthy families, these women used the region's fine ingredients to create meals that were simple yet perfect. After World War I, however, the French economy crashed, the bourgeoisie closed or sold their mansions, and many of the women found themselves unemployed.  With their work experience limited to the kitchen, they turned to restaurants and bouchons, staffing establishments that served a few dishes cooked exquisitely. The advent of automobile travel brought customers from far and wide, and eventually word of Lyon's exceptional cuisine spread throughout France... Some women -- liked the famed Mere Brazier -- even saw their restaurants earn Michelin stars.
      Today, although there are few of the original meres left in the kitchen, their influence endures. I discovered evidence of this cuisine de femmes at on Lyonnais restaurant, La Voute chez Lea, even though a man, Philippe Rabatel, currently owns it.
       Rabatel has the kind eyes of someone who loves to feed people and a heavy frame possibly made heavier from the cream-laced and butter-rich dishes he prepares. In 1980 he bought Chez Lea from Madame Lea, taking over the kitchen that she first established in 1942. 'She was the last mere to open up a restaurant in Lyon,' he told me. 'I spent six months with her, learning all her recipes.' Even after her retirement, Madame Lea lived in an apartment above the restaurant until her death several years later.
      Many of Madame Lea's recipes still appear on the restaurant's menu, including her salade lyonnaise. I asked Rabatel if he knew its origins.
       'Who knows?' He shrugged. 'It could have been the washerwomen who invented it.' In the days before refrigeration or washing machines, he said laundresses carried loads of soiled clothes to the river's edge, along with picnics of bacon, hard-boiled eggs, and bread. Perhaps, Rabatel, suggested, they gathered wild dandelion leaves along the way and tossed everything together into a big salad at the lunch hour. ...
      Madame Lea's version, as interpreted by Rabatel, arrived in large glass bowl with sides cloudy from vinaigrette. Inside, a pile of curly frisee leaves tumbled with slivers of lardons, garlic-rubbed croutons, and a soft-boiled egg gently broken so that its yolk trickled into the receptive crags of lettuce and bread, the whole just overdressed a la francais. I took a bite, and the tang of vinaigrette hit my palate, followed by the flush of bacon and something else deep and sumptuous. Smoked herring? As I ate, I thought of Madame Lea, and tried to imagine her as a young kitchen maid. At age sixteen she was sent into service at a bourgeois home, Rabatel told me, working for the same family for eight years. Was her hand evident in the vinaigrette, with its audacious hint of smoked herring? Had she boiled her eggs this way, with the yolk at that creamy point between soft and hard?
      Even as I ate, I considered something else Rabatel had said:  'No one ever invents a recipe. All the best chefs get their greatest recipes from their grandmother's kitchen.' So, then, was this Madame Lea's grandmother's salad?  Even with a recipe, a dish can never be recreated exactly. It will always be filtered through the hands of the cook, her memory of taste, the ingredients available, the weather, and a hundred other factors. ...

Something I was happy to think about on my way to and from the office, and a very good book -- and writer -- to spend time with.

I did get home early enough last night to pick up the three books that came in at the library -- a long-awaited mystery, a retelling of Jane Austen by a writer I like, and another new book about French food. My desk is a mess, but it's Friday, all my deadlines have been met, and I'm promising myself a lot of reading this weekend. :)

October 1913

I just couldn't resist.  This painting has nothing to do with The Custom of the Country, but it seems to capture how it would have felt to come to the end of ten months with Undine Spragg. It still does! :)

The painting, from 1899, found here, is by
Spanish artist Ramon Casas i Carbó (1866-1932).

 

 

Just One Evil Act

It's a little ironic, isn't it. that a book titled Just One Evil Act should be over 700 pages long? :)  Even though this is one of my favorite series, one  that I've been reading since the very beginning, I was a little dismayed when I picked it up at the library.  Does a mystery need to be that long?  And, at times, when I was reading, I  kind of wished it wasn't.  In the end, I didn't think this was one of the best Lynleys (it wasn't very suspenseful, and the ending just seemed contrived);  but I did find myself reading the last 75 pages in one sitting, wanting to know how everything would work out.

I had forgotten what happens at the very end of the last book, but it sets the stage for most of what happens in this one. This book focuses mostly on Havers, and how she tries to help her neighbor, Taymullah Azhar, when his lover, Angelina Upman suddenly leaves, taking their daughter Hadiyyah with her.  I never want to give away too much of what happens in a mystery, because I had a chance to follow the story as it unfolds, but the setting shifts to Tuscany, there's a kidnapping and a suspicious death, and Barbara is forced to step out of line even more than usual when she has no official way to protect her friends. Havers is such a wonderful character, and she becomes more interesting in this long story, as she struggles with a crime that she's not allowed to solve, a vindictive boss, and the deep pain of possibly losing her friends. {There's even an Italian detective who thinks she has a lovely smile and beautiful eyes.) The trade-off, though, is that Lynley loses a little of his luster and the other recurring characters (Winston Nkata, Deborah and Simon St. James) are literally just there for a page or two. I hope the next book will be a little more like the earlier ones, with all of them present, because this series is one I'll always look forward to.