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Saturday, May 18, 2013

The artist's muse and The Art of Eating

 
A proper plate of cassoulet. Last week, mine looked nothing like that. A cautionary tale. (Wiki commons photo)


The Art of Eating is one of my favorite books on food. It was written eons ago by the late MFK Fisher, an American food writer but not a chef. Her descriptions of her time in France are erotic...and she says not one word about anything sexual...and so are her descriptions of food. Some of her recipes are glorious. Others are pedestrian at best. 

Somehow, that's comforting. Most of us eat, most days, in very pedestrian ways. And then we get a wild hair, and create in the kitchen. I often wonder whether my past 40 years of creating new recipes was, mainly, a deflection of my desire to paint. But I don't wonder too long, because, after all, we have to eat.

But sometimes, we exceed even the pedestrian potential of MFK Fisher on her worst day. Usually I do it when I decide to use someone else's recipe instead of my own for a dish I've made up, improved on and generally added to a fool-proof repertoire. Last Sunday, I did exactly that.

***

When I was a young writer, in Manhattan, I had heard of a magical dish called cassoulet. The name alone was so redolent of the France I was, at that time, still dying to see that I hungered for it, despite the fact that I don't like beans much.

One Eastertide, when the tide of our fortunes had turned and royalty checks were rolling in, I decided it was time to go to the East Village to a French restaurant and have cassoulet.

I adored it.

I decided, like mixing paint colours, that I could approximate it, and approximate it I did. Believe it or not, I got a darn good dish out of the following: tinned Northern beans, peperoni slices, tinned chicken breast, tinned deviled ham, spices and herbs on hand, a tablespoon of tomato paste, and lots of browned chopped onions.

Naturally, I moved on from there and developed a dandy cassoulet with canned Northern or Haricot beans, chorizo, organic herby sausages, chicken breast browned and sliced, a couple of browned duck legs, browned chopped onions, herbs and spices. No tomato. Nor did I cook it in the oven. I used a Dutch oven on the hob. Not classic, but darn, the stuff was always good.

But then I courted disaster. I read a recipe for REAL cassoulet online, and also the same food writer's quickie version of the dish. I won't mention his name because I don't want to give the miserable sod any ink...and also, I've judiciously forgotten it.

So, I went with his quickie version for last Sunday's guests, not wanting to actually spend three days at the task beforehand.

In 40 years of having dinner parties, that recipe resulted in the very first time I felt it necessary to apologize to guests for the sorry condition of the meal they were fed. It was watery in the extreme, and I had to ramp up the oven to finish it off. My oven being what it is--the builder version that came with this new house, and a wonder of horrid engineering--it burned a bit before it became something other than beans-duck-sausage-lamb soup.

However, the dessert--mine, all mine, from concept to execution--saved the day. What was it? Almond custard-style ice cream and lavender sorbet, each served on a round of marzipan and drizzled with rose syrup. (OK. I bought the rose syrup in the local olive/Middle Eastern store. But the rest was made here.)

I didn't paint much this week. I think my muse was damaged by that blasted recipe from hell. I know my digestion was...and my pride. It seems to me a lot of artists probably like to cook, since it's combining things and coming up with a new product. I think, though, I would advise them to be careful, if using someone else's food palette, to be careful of their muse.

1 comment:

Roses said...

Yeah, sometimes a recipe really does go terribly wrong.

But you saved it with the dessert, which had me salivating. Yum.