In 1961, in love with the light, the landscape, and the odors of Provence, I bought an abandoned property near Solliès-Toucas. The house, perched halfway up a hillside, its only access from below a somewhat precarious footpath (four men and a dolly spent six hours delivering the cookstove while I spent the day running back and forth with bottles of white wine to keep up their spirits), was a total ruin. Stretching above, the several acres of stone-walled terraces planted to olive trees, once meticulously cared for, are grown wild to all those herbs—rosemary, wild thyme and savory, oregano, fennel, lavender, and mint—whose names are poetry and whose mingled perfumes scent the air of Provençal kitchens and hillsides alike.
The definitive move south followed the construction, with the help of my brothers, James and Byron, during the summer of 1964, of the great fireplace that dominates my kitchen and, in part, the pattern of my daily life.
In 1961, Georges Garin, having sold the Hôtel de la Croix Blanche in Nuits-Saint-Georges and having abandoned the kitchens of the Château du Clos Vougeot, opened his own restaurant, Chez Garin, in Paris. A great chef, he surpasses in his culinary knowledge anyone I have ever known, and his appetite and passion for eating are equaled only by my own. My enthusiasm for his cooking and our common passion for discussing anything culinary have cemented a friendship, generously truffled, over the years, by divine and often fantastic meals, in Paris Chez Garin, in Clamart, and in Solliès-Toucas.
Garin’s first visit to Clamart marked the only time that I have ever been terrified by the notion of preparing a meal. To avoid the possi-bility of errors, I opted for simple preparations and fine wines:
A COLD DISH—Artichoke Bottoms with Two Mousses
Château Bouscaut blanc, 1959
A RAPID SAUTE—Ortolans
Château Grand-Mayne, 1955
SALAD
CHEESES
Château Ducru-Beaucaillou, 1947
Tepid Apple Charlotte
Château d’Yquem, 1950
The meal was a success.
Madeleine Decure (who is, alas, no longer) shared with Garin the distinction of having the other most intelligent and analytic palate I have known. She was one of the two founders, in 1947, of the monthly gastronomic review Cuisine et Vins de France. The other was Curnonsky (born Maurice Sailland in Anjou), the remarkable personality who was acclaimed Prince élu des Gastronomes by a jury of professional chefs and gastronomic journalists. His eightieth birthday was celebrated by a now famous meal organized by his eighty preferred Paris restaurants, each of which then reserved with a bronze plaque his preferred table in the restaurant—in perpetuity!
I met Madeleine Decure in 1961 (but not Curnonsky, regrettably; he had died five years earlier) at the same time that I met Odette Kahn, then associate director of the magazine, and the gastronomic journalists Michel Lemonnier and Simon Arbellot. Our meals together, exchanged and re-exchanged, individually and as a group, were punctuated by wine-tasting excursions to all corners of France. Garin, tied to his kitchens, established an annual tradition of inviting us as a group to dinners, at the composition of whose menus I delightedly assisted. Among the preparations—all memorable—were: partridge consommé garnished with tiny partridge mousseline quenelles, whole braised calf’s liver with a truffled cèpe purée, fresh salmon braised in champagne, gratin of crayfish tails, fresh foie gras, roast saddle of venison, and that rarity, a perfect coq au vin, not to mention a repertory of astonishing soufflés—lobster, pike, woodcock, fresh asparagus, wild strawberry, etc.
The last seriously organized meal that I served in Clamart was in the autumn of 1964. The champagne, a Clos des Goisses, dated from nine years earlier. Madeleine and Odette had asked me to present a menu as a regular monthly feature in Cuisine et Vins de France, the recipes for each preparation to be explained in simple and nonprofessional language. The first of my menus to be published in the magazine was the one I served that evening:
Raw Baby Artichokes, Poivrade
Pike Mousseline, Turban of Sole and Salmon Fillets, Nantua Sauce (garnished with a sauté of truffles and crayfish tails and crayfish shells stuffed with pike mousseline) Mercurey blanc, 1962
Boned Stuffed Chicken, Glazed in its Jelly
Pernand-Vergelesses, 1960
Composed Salad
Cheeses
Clos de la Roche, 1955
Pineapple Frangipane Fritters
Château Rieussec, 1947
My menu series in Cuisine et Vins de France was entitled (to my dismay) Un Américain (gourmand) à Paris. The rubric continues.
In the south, my patterns are different from those of Clamart. Friends are not invited to dinner—they come for a few days or a few weeks. Menus tend to be simpler. Living mostly out of doors for well over half the year, one becomes acutely aware of the swift seasonal cycle, and the table follows suit. The shortest days of the year—the gloom of winter and a dormant garden—are soon brightened by banks of yellow mimosa, and narcissus perfumes the air. Truffles turn blackest and richest from this moment, olives are ripe, and the glorious thick, murky, newly pressed olive oil, unsettled and unfiltered, appears. The first simple country wines of the year, slightly green, a tiny edge of fermentation remaining to tickle the tongue, fresh and fruity, are the perfect accompaniment to rough and robust nourishing winter dishes. In no more than a few weeks the almond trees are already in blossom, the first young fava, or broad beans, too delicate to be eaten other than raw, appear on the market, rapidly followed by violet artichokes, sweet white onions and tiny peas. By the end of March the hillsides are scattered with the tender shoots of wild asparagus, the exquisite morel will soon make its brief appearance, wild thyme is in flower, green beans, cherries, strawberries, peaches, follow in rapid succession, the rich, sweet tomato crowns the summer season, oregano must be gathered, and, with tree-ripe figs, wild mushrooms, game birds, green olives, and the reappearance of young artichokes and sea urchins, the plunge is taken into autumn and the shortest days are again in sight. Fish is fresh the year round, and often can be bought alive; snails are gathered, starved, and sacrificed to the courtbouillon, fresh goats’-milk and sheeps’-milk cheeses enrich the cheese platter, and the olives, prepared without chemicals each autumn, garnish the luncheon hors d’oeuvre.
The pages of this book are a loyal reflection of my life in the kitchen and at table over the last twenty years. The seasonal form into which it has been cast emphasizes my intense conviction that, despite midwinter tomatoes, strawberries, asparagus and green beans, and the plethora of “fresh” frozen products on the market, one can only eat marvelously by respecting the seasons; each is sufficiently rich to afford a perfect table the year round, and the excitement of eating a freshly picked fruit or vegetable at the peak of its seasonal richness is forever deadened by the dull and listless year-round ab-sorption of its shadow.
No recipes are given which involve products unavailable in America. Certain American products for which I have a particular affection and which may advantageously be incorporated into French menus (sweet corn, avocados, wild rice, for instance) are not treated, simply because, although the book is essentially a personal gastronomic manifesto, I have preferred that it not stray from traditional French cooking. Some favorite and typically French preparations have been eliminated,