The moment I hired female bartenders for San Francisco’s Balboa Café, the singles bar testosterone capital of the world, the regulars broke into a riot.
And left.
As soon as I added flowers they were back and offering me advice on how to do it.
“Don’t you think you should use gladioli?”
“No, I’m not Dame Edna.”
Now, living in the Yucatán of Mexico, I’ve learned and experienced the importance and culture of a culinary world originating from the ancestral world of women cooks. Mothers, aunties, and grandmothers.
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Three cooks in Merida, Yucatan
Mother
Yesterday I re-found a little cookbook of my mother’s. Found again in that I have read it many times before, but it is so thin – only 45 pages long and less than ¼ inch thick – that it gets lost for years at a time in my cookbooks.
It’s a book on cod.
La Morue was printed in Paris in 1958 by the Comite de Propagande Pour la Consommation de la Morue, what must have been the French fish equivalent of the American Beef council.
Flipping through the book I was amazed to see my father’s handwriting on one of the recipes. I should not say amazed, since he was a passionate (rare, weekend, single-dish) cook. And he loved codfish fresh and salted. There is his written translation of mijoter as “simmer,” and “moisten” for mouiller. This was all under the recipe for Bouillabaisse de morue fécampoise, and he took the liberty of adding leeks to the list of ingredients.
But it is the handwriting of my mother on the inside cover that really intrigues me, not just personally and historically, but because it is titled “Sunday Times by ED.” I fantasize now that this does not mean my mother is quoting the editor of the Times, but that it was Elizabeth David who wrote the article on cod. Elizabeth did write for the Times when she wasn’t furious with it and sending off stuff to the Observer or to Vogue instead. And certainly, I made brandade de morue for her a couple of times in London while we drank my expensive cache of Condrieu.
My mother adored salt cod it in all shapes and presentations. The first recipe she wrote down in her recipe notebooks was the Elizabeth David recipe for Brandade de Morue Nimes, a town my parents were always driving off to from London for the food and the excuse to pass by and stop at Fernand point’s La Pyramide in Vienne, and the Cote d’Or in Saulieu.
The second recipe was hers:
My Home-style Salt Cod
“Soak fish. Cut in pieces. Put in a marinade of olive oil and wine vinegar, a pinch of pepper and nutmeg, a sliced red, sweet Brittany onion, and minced parsley. Marinate 12 hours. Drain. Roll each piece in flour, dip in beaten egg, roll in white breadcrumbs, and fry lightly in oil. Drain and dust with parsley and served with creamed potatoes.
Serve with vin de Langlade.”
I have no idea what vin de Langlade is, but it is probably not as expensive as Condrieu. Lapping up the white wine would have given my mother an appetite for the second recipe she wrote down: Elizabeth David’s Salt Cod.
Elizabeth David
I have hardly ever been as happy as when having lunch with Elizabeth David. Not so much because of the restaurants of choice, in which anything could go wrong and the hours could be filled with more distressed “oh dears” (when talking about Richard Olney, James Beard or Alice Waters) than eating. But the conversations – which would come to life after the second bottle of wine and continue until she called it quits in her Chelsea kitchen at around seven in the evening – were spectacular. As was the brandade we fixed one day, albeit taken to new heights by the addition of some fresh black truffles.
Here it is for 2 pounds of salt cod to serve 5 to 7 people.
Brandade de Morue de Nimes
“Soak salt cod 12 hours. Cut in pieces and bring to a boiling point. Drain. Bring to a boiling point. Drain and pound morue to a paste. As you do this, add, drop by drop, warmed olive oil alternately with the same quantity of warm milk or, better still, cream. Turn constantly until the consistency of potato puree. Pepper to taste, add squeeze of lemon juice and a mashed clove of garlic. Reheat gently, put in a hot dish and garnish with small triangles of bread fried in butter and olive oil – or in vol au vents.
Serve with pickled black olives and a bottle of vin de Langlade.”
My Aunt
Elizabeth would have approved of my aunt (they had both been very beautiful when young as well as older) and her cooking, if she would have thought the Russian emerald parure and huge ring worn at lunch was a bit over the top.
By the time I was sixteen, my parents felt I could hold down a kitchen of my own. One summer, when my mother left for the United States, my father and I decided to spend that time in our mews flat in Knightsbridge, London mews flat. It was my job to cook, so my Washington D.C. aunt wrote constantly with cooking advice.
“Take a cup-up bird…” and so on. The most challenging was for fresh cod, Russian style, meaning French, since that is what those aristocrats spoke and ate. Here’s the dish she did for a lunch when I was a teenager for Count Cheremetev, Youssupov’s childhood friend, and my pal, the crown prince of Poland.
Codfish a la Highlife
Make a brunoise of white of 3 leeks, 1 onion, 1 carrot, a small heart of celery, 2 skinned, seeded and chopped tomatoes, a clove of garlic, salt and pepper, moisten with a little water, cover, and let sit on low heat to gently steam for 10 minutes or until the vegetables start to get soft.
Put in a whole small and trimmed codfish that has been boned through the back a la Colbert into the pan. Pour in ¼ cup Loire dry wine and 1 cup of mussel stock. Cover and poach 20 minutes or until the fish is barely cooked through.
Remove the fish and keep warm. Strain the cooking juices, and reduce by half. Add 1 cup of heavy cream and reduce again until syrupy. Drain and set the fish in a bed of very rich mashed potatoes of half butter and cream. Chop fresh black truffles and add to the cream. Spoon the truffles into the cavity of the fish and then the sauce over the fish.
My aunt told me that there were supposed to be crawfish tails with the truffles but “where in England would I find those as fresh as the fish and the truffles?”
Hello, JT - I worked for you at Stars as a server from 1989-1990...it was one of the highlights of my career in hospitality. You were always very gracious and encouraging with the staff (front and back-of-house) and the environment was fun & glamorous! Whenever I turned around there was someone famous or infamous standing there chatting you up...Mrs. Hale or Mrs. Getty, etc. I'll never forget the time during a busy lunch shift I looked over my shoulder and there you were in a huddle with Rudolf Nureyev...WOW! A great work experience with a sensational employer...I don't even want to call it a restaurant because it was much more than that. Stars was a HAPPENING!
I've been enjoying your Substack, stories, antidotes, and photos...thank you for sharing!
The best brandade I ever had was one you cooked at Chez Panisse. It was sublime. I had watched the salting the day before and thought that would be the aftertaste. Imagine my surprise when it wasn't. I haven't had as subtle a brandade since. How I miss those days. My favorite image of you is one in which you are backed into the wall in the downstairs dining room with books scattered
on your table and the adjoining ones too. Post Its everywhere as you created the menu for the following week. Oh and being constantly interrupted !