A few days ago, a publisher asked me if I had any more writing like California Dish and its revised version Start the Fire which they admired.
I found some old journals which had survived the flooding in Katrina.
I was writing an article called “What Sauces Mean to Me.”But that will have to wait until next week. Other than a few sauce comments here.
And a note on the wines. I had bought them al at Sotheby’s and Christies and they were very inexpensive in those days. Very.
Some were on the fly. At the Big Sur store in the 70’s I found a 25-year old Chateau Lafite for $25. I guess they guessed the price by its age.
1969 I stocked up for the Black Panther Conference prices incase the revolution hit the streets. The Monterey Market, Carmel prices were 1959 Lafite $42.50 and 1963 Romanee-Conti $25.00.
At Harvard College freshman year,I found refuge at an apartment on Boston’s Beacon Hill, 20 Chestnut Street.
Inside everything the color of champagne. All Baudelaire and Bach. Owned by a teaching fellow who had just given me this outline of his course. “A Monologue of Reflections on the Critical Process and the Verbal Construct: A Problem of the Structures of Language and the Meaning of Meaning.”
I was 19 and the meaning of almost anything was beyond me.
Except when I cooked.
Usually steak au poivre when it wasn’t a Chicken Club or Omelet.
Always first a Jack Daniels, then the food with Chambolle Musigny followed by Courvoisier and Pills for more music and Baudelaire.
21st BIRTHDAY PARTY AT LOCKE-OBER, NOVEMBER 6TH 1963
Baked Oysters Casino
Grilled Filet of Beef, Perigourdine
Endive Salad
Mint ice
Coffee & Cognac
My father was paying so the wines were Pouilly Fume 1959 and Chateau Margaux 1955.
Sauce Périgueux and its sibling Sauce Périgourdine is a demi-glace (or better an Espagnol) finished with madeira and fresh black truffles. In the former the truffles are chopped and the latter in slices. Either is my favorite work-intensive sauce. They most famously adorn Tournedos Rossini.
1963 Allen Ginsberg in Our Junior Year Rooms
Image: Jason Hondall 1963
No women were allowd in the rooms. But no problems with Alan and his lover Peter Orlovsky camping out on our sofa. “Josquin des Pres playing I smoked marijuana for the first time. Not so exciting really (first time). I prefer a good champagne, Lafite-Rothschild or Otard any day. Offered them some.”
Senior Year Row House
A hot night with goose and Chateau d’Yquem
And after a note from my roommate Michael Palmer
“marrons glacés
ami aime
gracia bene”
With a present of
“Truffles brossées
Poems of HD”
1965 Dinner for Friends
Senior year was over and this was a farewell to Cambridge. Also in celebration of a New York News article called “A Growing Concern: Many British Lads Have Longer Hair than the Girls.” I had copied it to all the group, and reproduced for the menu the photo of long-haired and beautiful boys in a group on Carnaby Street corner, the caption “these may be boys watching all the girls go by – but who can tell for sure?”
And an occasion to drink the 1884 Madeira that Michael Palmer had given me for my birthday in 1964.
Frozen Buffalo Grass Vodka
Pate
Consommé Madrilene
Salmon en gelée aux truffes
Filet de Beouf Perigourdine
Strawberries & French Cream
Coffee
The wines were Pouilly Fume 1962 for the salmon, ChateauNeuf du Pape 1957 with the beef, Asti Spumante with the berries, followed by “Napolean” Armagnac, ending with the Sercial Madeira 1884
1965-67
Not much cooking since I lived either in England with my guardians (who had a cook) or in a rooming house in Epsom where I was so poor, I lived on cottage cheese and beer. A brief stint cooking for a local pub, and was fired when I put butter in the mashed potatoes, scoring massive complaints from the locals.
1969 Champagne while the world crumbles.
In April were the riots at Harvard. I dumped my public housing project and my final presentation at the Graduate School of Design was Films of the bomb, sounds, actors, boards, slides, improvisations, readings, projections, grass cookies. And my Underwater Habitat Molotov cocktails in Dom Perignon bottles.
It was a flop so my friends Cathy and Michael gave a dinner and Simenon in French to soften the blow.
Asparagus, sauce Alsacienne
Tuna, fresh, over charcoal
Salad, lettuce of the garden, mushrooms
Pie, strawberry, rhubarb
Scotches & soda
Sauce Alsacienne is a cold mayonnaise-like emulsion typically made with hard boiled eggs and mustard.” I love the chopped eggs with asparagus, and don’t need the “vinegar, shallots, capers, and fresh herbs” often called for.
Well maybe the herbs especially if fresh tarragon.
1969 Dinner with Friends to Write a Letter to Buckminster Fuller
To ask his permission to use his Geodesic Domes for my underwater habitations. And because I had some Corton Chambertin 1966 left.
Croustades de Champignons
Mousse de fletan, sauce crevettes
Asparagus
Pate de foie,
Boysenberry ice
Café, Calvados, Drambuie
The sauce crevettes a reduced stock of shrimp shells and white wine mounted with butter and perfumed with fresh tarragon. It was the only sauce since the croustades had just the mushroom hash.
1970 Private Hog Island in Maine having just read Ewell Gibbons’ Stalking The Wild Aspsaragus.
Image: Tripadvisor
“Found four nests of Eider ducks on the beach, each with four eggs. The eggs still wet. Took one. Found also samphire, sour sorrel, and lovage – or seacoast angelica. As well as young dandelion. Mussels, a bushel or so, some for salad.
Lunch
Asparagus with almond oil chopped Eider duck egg
Mussel salad mayonnaise sauce
Steamed mussels with samphire
Spinach-sorrel noodles
The mayonnaise was thinned by dry white wine and I added a little Dijon mustard, a touch of horseradish, minced shallots, and cooked sorrel puree.
Dinner
Roast Pork Loin Maderia Sauce
Lovage puree
Apple sauce
The wine was Chateau Rauzan-Gassie 1962 (Margaux).
The Lovage puree was lovage boiled about 5 mins, chopped and straight into béchamel, eat immediately.
Lovage cooking in water the best sea smell yet better than lobster or clams cooking. The broth is still to be experimented on.
Another Dinner
Lobster cream
Lobster salad
(sorrel garnish, fresh)
The wine was Bollinger, brut 1961.
The cream: lobster coral, the fat (lining the shell), liver made into a paste, add mixed with mayonnaise. Notes: Sea sorrel excellent with mussels and lobster, ‘excellent’ in that the taste of it admires the other. Rhubarb from garden for lunch. ½ hour from the garden. What to do with rhubarb tops?
Lunch: Sorrel Soup
Roux, add fine chopped sorrel, cook 5 mins. Add stock (here lovage broth – water it cooked in). Season, pat of butter.
Serve
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