Food Writing

A nice score at the Goodwill Bookstore earlier this fall. One day a month they have an all the books you can get in a bag for $2 sale. A food person must have died, because there were a great many food books, and I picked up several for my winter reading pile. Today I was reading the memoirs of the chef Pierre Franey, followed by a book of his recipes. Le Pavillon, NYC, 1955. Excellent reading for yet another rainy day. Flash flood warnings on the radio, but Jesus, this would have been several feet of snow. A can of soup and crackers is as far as I get into preparing food, but I am thinking ahead because it looks pretty certain I'll get into town in the next few days. A ham and bean soup, for sure, and everything to make a stew. An extra smoked jowl, for a pot of beans to eat with rice. I have an enormous variety of beans and peas right now. I didn't go out of the house today, but I did think about a pot of heirloom cow peas that I'll be cooking sometime this winter. I have two heirloom bean/peas, the other being a Black Crowder pea that makes absolutely the best pot-liquor. Thinking about this, I must have raised fifty different beans and peas over the years. Everyone in Mississippi saved a variety or two, Lady Peas, Cow Peas, a dozen different Crowders. I've loved almost all of them. Pink-Eye Purple Hulls, and ripe but green Pinto beans (which cook very quickly and are completely different than dried Pintos, which I also love), and various of the small African peas that require children to shell them. I'm totally immersed in the history of French cooking in America right now, because three of the books from the Goodwill concern elements of it. Before Julia. Jefferson, over the years, had three French cooks. I slept in Tom's room, for the nine months that I worked on his father's place. A very cold house, unless you burned a cord of wood a week in the two fireplaces. One would need a hired hand, or a large family, to do all the things that needed to be done. Just to get from one place to another. My new, prioritized list, is topped with a back-up battery for my head-lamp, and a bag of those sweet potato chips. Sweet potato chips, or beet chips, and a hoe-cake smeared with butter. Some gherkins, cracklings cooked in an omelet, maybe a very sweet pear. A strange but interesting tip: when using canned broth (as I do quite often) add a jar of strained baby food. It comes in glass jars and has nothing added. When it gets cold, I often drink hot broth and it's amazing how much better it is with an added jar of baby food. B had mentioned a pounded veal roll-up his Mom used to make. She referred to them as 'birds', and I actually found, yesterday, a recipe for Veal Birds. All my years of reading food books and cooking and I had never run into that recipe before. And what does the 'divan' in Chicken Divan mean? It's the only recipe I've ever found that uses that term. I suppose it could be someone's name, as in Melba Toast. Got out for a walk between rain squalls and it's been so warm the ridge had that fecund smell of spring, which will freeze and be gone in a week or two, but it was strange smelling such a smell at the beginning of winter. This entire walk, which covered maybe half-a-mile and took over an hour, I was smelling everything. Deep-freeze winter kills almost all smell, except what you generate, burning a sassafras or cedar log with the door of the stove cracked open, or cooking something. If you cook onions for a very long time, way beyond being simply caramelized, you end up with a dried condiment (which I store in baby-food jars) that is very good on anything. A powdered onion essence. A spoonful on a fried egg is a total transport. It's raining harder, I'd better go.