La Première Année de Cuisine, Part 19

MADELEINE’S JOURNAL

TWENTIETH ENTRY

Fishing for gudgeon. — Parsley in frying. — Cleaning copper; — wrought iron and tin; — cast iron. — The best method for successful cleaning.

A great pleasure-party yesterday: I went fishing with a few people I know. Tante Victoire, too fatigued, could not come with us. She did not seem otherwise upset, since she had to complete the great cleaning of the kitchen, which we had begun the other day.

We brought back a great many gudgeons to fry up, and it is I who was charged with cooking them. [Gudgeon: a small, fresh-water fish. French: goujon; Latin: Gobio fluviatilis.]

If I didn’t have Tante Victoire close at hand, I don’t know if I would have dared to try my chances. Think of it! Cooking for strangers, I, Madeleine, who, just a year ago, knew nothing of frying or of grilling.

In the end, I acquitted myself well, even though I came close to burning myself quite cruelly. I am going to recount in detail that which happened:

Gudgeon

I had washed my gudgeons well, I had cleaned them, rolled them in flour. Meanwhile, my frying oil was boiling. I plunged my gudgeons into it, they cooked, they became golden, I removed them, I salted them, I placed them on the dish to serve them.

“Don’t forget the fried parsley!” my aunt cried out to me.

Precisely, I had forgotten it. Quickly I took a bouquet of parsley, I washed it under running water, I shook it vigorously and, without taking the time to let it dry, I threw it into the boiling oil.

A veritable explosion was produced. Grease splattered, flying into the air, landing on my hands with which instinctively I protected my face. My aunt came running upon hearing the noise, quickly she cared for me, made me plunge my hands into cold water, and she began a lamentation even as she scolded me.

As for me, I did not dare to cry, since I really felt that it was my fault. What’s more, the pain passed quickly, the burns did not run deep. But I had received a good lesson, and I shall remember from now on that as soon as one throws parsley into the frying oil, it is necessary to step away quickly from the stove.

Fried parsley

That which completed my consolation, was that the gudgeons and the parsley that accompanied them were declared to be excellent.

This morning, I said to Tante Victoire: “My dear aunt, yesterday evening, while cooking, I noticed that the copper fixtures of the oven and the candlesticks gleamed as if made of gold. It’s clear to see that you passed by that way and that, while we were fishing for gudgeon, you were working without stopping. But how then did you succeed in making everything shine so beautifully again?”

“Ma chère petite,” Tante Victoire answered me, “I might well have polished the copper that much and more, and I would not have obtained any result whatever had I not used special products to make it shine. You see, I have here a red powder, it is called tripoli; — and a bottle of a special liquid. I am going to explain to you how one uses each of these products.

“If one wishes to use tripoli, one puts it in a saucer with some vinegar, one makes a paste of it with which one rubs the object to be polished. Let it dry, then rub vigorously with a piece of flannel.

“If, instead of tripoli, one uses this water I have here, which is eau de cuivre, one shakes the bottle, one pours a bit of liquid into a saucer, one dips a rag into it, and one rubs the object. Then proceed the way I told you for the tripoli.”

“Can eau de cuivre be used also to shine the kitchen utensils?”

“Yes, for the pots and other copper utensils; but for that which is of wrought iron or tin, one uses whiting,* diluted with water.”

“And for the objects made of cast iron, such as the oven, the stewpot, the grill?”

“I use graphite, diluted with a bit of flaxseed oil and turpentine. Instead of polishing with a wool rag, one uses a brush.”

“How all that is useful!” I cried, “and how easy it now seems to make a kitchen look nice! You will see, Tante Victoire, as soon as I return home, how I shall keep our kitchen shining and pretty. Maman will see that I have taken good profit from your lessons. Only, since I fear to forget these good little recipes, I am going to make note of them in my journal, this evening, before I go to bed.”

“You will do very well,” said Tante Victoire, “and above all do not forget to write down the most important and the most precious of all my recommendations: For all cleaning, a good firm rubbing is still the best means of success.”

Voilà, it is written down.

These women are following Tante Victoire’s advice, by standing well away from the stove while frying parsley.
(However, unless you are naked, you probably don’t need to stand this far away from the stove.)

WHAT I MUST DO

[To copy and to keep]

1. I shall know that fish is fresh when I see that it is shining, with clear eyes and very red gills.

2. Whenever I have made use of a court-bouillon once, I shall not throw it out; I shall strain it and I shall preserve it in a tightly corked bottle in order to use it a second time, since court-bouillon can keep for several days.

3. Whenever I throw parsley into the frying oil, I shall take care to back away rapidly from the frying pan, since parsley makes grease or hot oil sizzle and splatter.

4. To polish copper, I shall use tripoli or eau de cuivre.

5. To polish wrought iron or tin, I shall use whiting diluted with water.

6. To clean objects made of cast iron, I shall make a paste of graphite, flaxseed oil, and essence of turpentine. I shall rub the object with a small rag and I shall make it shine with a brush.

7. I shall remember that the best means of success when one is cleaning, is to give a good firm rubbing.

Next time: Madeleine learns how to polish wood and glass. (Plus tips on cooking vegetables — including potatoes!)

How I love les poissons!

CHAPTER XII

Fish.

132. Fish is not good except when it is fresh and well cooked.

133. We know when fish is fresh when it has shiny scales, clear eyes, and red and bloody gills.

134. To prepare a fish to be cooked, clean it by removing the interior organs, whether by the gills or with the help of an incision made along the belly.
If the fish has tough scales, scrape it with a knife in the direction opposite to the scales, in order to detach them.
If the fish does not have scales, but a tough and thick skin, skin it by pinching the skin at one end and then gently pulling in such a manner that it slides off the flesh.

134. In household cooking, we may prepare fish:
1. Boiled in salt water;
2. Boiled in a court-bouillon;
3. Fried in a skillet in lard, in oil, or in butter;
4. Grilled on a grill.

135. Fish boiled in salted water or in court-bouillon is quickly cooked. It is necessary to avoid letting it overcook, because then the flesh comes off the bones and the fish looks bad.

136. A court-bouillon is an aromatic liquid, composed of white wine or a mixture of vinegar and water, seasoned with onion, garlic, parsley, thyme, bay leaf.

137. Fried fish must be thrown into very hot frying oil, then drained in a colander, then salted at the moment it is served.

138. Grilled fish is simply placed on a grill above a fire of red-hot coals. It is served, accompanied by a special sauce which is generally composed of melted butter and finely chopped herbs; or a rémoulade.

Why God created capers: Raie au beurre noir
(That citrus garnish is pretty outré, though.)

139. Skate au beurre noir. — Cook the skate in slat water. In a skillet, place a large piece of butter and let it heat just until it is browned. Then add to this some vinegar, salt, pepper, parsley. The skate being cooked, remove it from the water, dry it, place it on a heated dish and pour over it the butter sauce from the skillet.

140. Cod in white sauce. — In a pan, prepare a white sauce with milk. When it has “set,” place strips of cod that have been desalted for 12 hours and cooked in water. Let this “stew” over low flame for one quarter-hour and serve, very hot.

141. Large fish: shad, pike, sea-bream, turbot, salmon, etc. … Cook these fish in a court-bouillon and serve them accompanied by a cold sauce: vinegar, rémoulade, mayonnaise, or by a hot sauce: white sauce, butter, or hollandaise.

Pike

142. Sole, dab, mackerel, whiting. — When these fish are of small size, flour them after having cleaned and gutted them, then plunge them into very hot frying oil. The best frying material for fish is oil. The next-best is lard mixed with the grease of veal kidneys.

143. Sardines, sliced shad or salmon. — Sardines and slices of shad or of salmon are cooked over a slightly high flame on the grill. Serve sardines without any other accompaniment than fresh butter. Grilled sliced shad or salmon is accompanied with a maître d’hôtel sauce.

*TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: Tante Victoire refers to two different types of whiting, Spanish and Parisian (blanc d’Espagne, blanc de Paris). Perhaps needless to say, neither of these kinds of whiting has anything to do with the fish that’s referred to elsewhere in this lesson.

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Theme Jacob, or How to Succeed in Business by Writing More about Taylor Lautner

What’s up with his nose, anyway?
Why doesn’t anyone write a story about that?

Apparently, it is the policy of the New York Magazine website to run at least one article per day about the young actor Taylor Lautner. Even after having read several of these dispatches, I don’t really understand what the fuss is about. Lautner has an impressive physique and co-stars in the popular Twilight movies, yet there doesn’t seem to be much more to say about him, no matter how hard the scribes work at it.

Is anybody really interested in this kid? The folks at New York Magazine must think so, and heaven knows they’re smarter about marketing than I’ll ever be. Clearly they’re convinced that legions of dedicated Lautner fans must scour the Internet for any reference to their idol, and the magazine values that reader demographic.

Meanwhile, because summer is here and so many of my own loyal readers, like myself, may not be able to spend much time on this blog, I have determined to boost (or at least maintain) my circulation figures — just the way that New York does. I’m going to mention Taylor Lautner as often as possible.

My sources tell me that Lautner walks upright.
Also, he has opposable thumbs.

This will be difficult, but business is business. Since I’ve seen none of the Twilight movies and don’t know the guy personally, it’s pretty much impossible to write about Taylor Lautner without making stuff up. Both my journalistic scruples and Lautner’s attorneys forbid me to do that. So today I’d like to try out a few samples of the ways that references to Taylor Lautner might be incorporated into the kinds of articles I typically post here.

One-Hit Wonders for $500, Alex:
Who is Right Said Fred?

Sample 1:
Joyce Castle opened her recital with a selection of little-known arias by composer Jacob Taylor-Lautner. “Gott! Hemdlos bin ich wieder noch einmal” and “Ich bin heißer als Edward” were delivered with glistening tone in the chest and rare intensity of expression, and when she arrived at the tender “An Bella,” she brought tears to my eyes. Her encore, Satie’s “Six abdominaux en forme de tablette de chocolat,” had us hungering for more.

Later that week, Joyce DiDonato appeared in Rossini’s serious opera Don Lautner del Lago, in which she plays the trouser role of Lautner, a disgraced nobleman who disguises himself as a humble taylor. Joyce told me that this was the first time she’d sung shirtless in New York, and while she was nervous at first, she believes it’s essential to the drama. On opening night, the audience cheered her free and easy top.
Categories: Joyce Castle, Joyce DiDonato, Music


Sample 2:
Curiously, Proust does not give names to any of the male prostitutes who work in Jupien’s brothel, with the famous exception of the handsome young Taylor Lautner, whom Charlus craves. Proust borrowed the name from that of the hero of Stendhal’s great novel, La chemise égarée.
Category: Books and Writers

Buffing up a massive chest

Sample 3:
“But Tante Victoire!” I cried. “What shall I use to polish the furniture that is made of wood?”

“Ah, my little Madeleine,” my good aunt answered, “you must use a little of this very special product, which is called huile de Lautner; it is ideal for any kind of hardwood. And remember that the best method is always a good firm rubbing.”

I did as she told me, and applied a little of the Lautner oil to a rag. Then I set to work on the massive chest in my bedroom. Tante Victoire was right! You would not believe how it was quickly buffed up and glistening. Why, I almost wanted to lick it! I had never done such a thing before!

I recounted this to my aunt, and she smiled. “Now, ma chère,” she said, “it is time for you to learn that Lautner oil has other uses, too. Come and give me a foot massage.”
Category: La Première Année de Cuisine

Master Thespian: Acting!

Sample 4:
My meeting with George Bush was brief but telling, I think. Though he had not yet entered politics, he had a keen eye already: it was, after all, the family business, in a manner of speaking. He offered me a tour of the political horizon, then offered me two words of advice I’ll never forget.

“My boy,” he said, “if you want to get ahead in life, just stay true to the old Latin expression my daddy taught me: taylor lautner.” And then, as he showed me out, he repeated slowly: “Taylor lautner.”
Categories: Mentors, Portraits, Texas

Taylor Lautner & Robert Pattinson: Secretly gay lovers?
No! But I just guaranteed myself about 60,000 blog hits.

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Uncle Johnnie

The Madisons, late 1940s
Standing: Dean Walters, Chuck Wallace, Anne Wallace, Dayrle Crabb, Loey, Johnnie, Dad
Seated: John V. Madison, Sr.; Kay Crabb, Louise Walters, Anna Madison, Abraham Beard
I dare not attempt to identify the children!

My father’s brother will be buried this afternoon; he passed away on Monday, at the age of 85. When I was a boy, we were very close: his family and ours lived in the same town, and we sometimes took trips together. For the rest of my life, the smell of pipe tobacco will recall comfort and strength, because there was always a cloud of it around my Uncle Johnnie.

But I realize that I haven’t seen him in a decade (long after he stopped smoking), and it’s been nearly as long since I got one of those exciting libertarian rants he used to churn out by e-mail for the edification of everyone he knew, including his upstart socialist nephew in the People’s Republic of Manhattan. In later years, Johnnie did develop the capacity to behave like a bit of a crank. But he seldom exploited that capacity to its fullest, and besides, he’d earned the right — by serving his country in time of war, which is more than I ever did.

Johnnie was a Seabee in World War II, and after the war he came home and married his childhood sweetheart, Lois, remaining by her side until now. These are two of the most extraordinary things anyone I know has done: I have no idea how he managed either feat. How does one join the Navy in wartime — without ever having seen the ocean? How does one meet and keep the love of one’s life — when one is twelve? Johnnie seemed to think that these accomplishments were perfectly normal, as if anybody could do the same, and I never pressed him to explain. I should have. The most he ever said on either subject was that Aunt Loey had done most of the hard work.

The Greatest Generation ... of love
Johnnie and Loey, together

Together they reared four children and created a home — several homes, actually, that felt as if they were mine, as well. Johnnie was always making us laugh, though I can’t remember any of the jokes; now his gentle humor rings in my mind like a song to which I’ve forgotten the words. I remember the music, too, of Loey’s soothing voice as she read me bedtime stories. She taught English, and also home economics, which meant that dinner at their house was a treat. Between Johnnie and Loey, there was literally nothing that couldn’t be made from scratch.

Their children, my cousins, were always bursting in with some astonishing discovery: Bill Cosby routines and MAD Magazine, rock music, and runzas, which are little meat pies. They were taller and smarter than I. They knew how to draw and to play sports. They were prodigious. They were teenagers, and therefore thrilling.

Foreign-exchange students came and went, and some of them were Swiss — affording my first inkling that real people actually spoke French and that, therefore, I might try it, too.

My father, Johnnie, and their three sisters were preacher’s kids who moved often, from congregation to congregation throughout the Midwest, and as adults they moved their families often, too. This has amounted to a diaspora, but when I was younger, the Madisons resisted it valiantly. Each branch of the family undertook long road trips to visit the others; there was absolutely nothing unusual in driving day and night without stopping, for no other purpose than to see one’s relatives and perhaps a local landmark, if any, before turning around and driving home again.

Aunt Kay and Uncle Dayrle grew impatient with automobiles, however, and bought a little airplane. They were flying it to see us when they crashed, many years ago now. For years, Kay and Dayrle had been the gravitational center of the Madison family: we always congregated at their house for Thanksgiving. We congregated just once more, for their funeral service. And then, as all the nieces and nephews grew older and scattered themselves more widely, the diaspora became a hardened, immutable fact of our lives. It became more difficult to see one another, to know one another.

And yet there were still lightning flashes of closeness, like the extraordinary moment not long after I began working at Opera News, when my Uncle Chuck telephoned to congratulate me, and to tell me that he was an opera buff, too. A performance by Risë Stevens in Carmen had transformed him in his youth. I had always known that Chuck loved music — really, I believe he became a preacher primarily as an excuse to sing once a week. But how could he not have known that I loved music, too? Then I did the math: I had only just discovered opera when Auntie Kay died. Uncle Chuck had barely seen me in the years since.

Despite the distances, I believe we would still go out of our way for one another, we Madisons, and on occasion we prove it. For example, Johnnie and Loey’s daughter, Ruth, kept a watchful eye on me from the vantage of Kingston, RI, through all the years while I was at Brown; in fact, it was at her suggestion that I first visited the campus. And so on. We don’t see much of one another, but the love of family endures. I believe it.

I think Johnnie wanted more assurance, though, and for many years he dedicated uncommon energy to the pursuit and publication of our family tree. All of us are codified now, and though I couldn’t begin to tell you what my code is, Johnnie used to address me by it, parenthetically, presumably for the purposes of his own record-keeping, rather than from any dire hope that I might learn it. Other people pursue genealogy as a means of knowing themselves. (The question “Where did I come from?” being fundamental to answering the question “Who am I?”) But in Johnnie’s case, the goal seemed not to be that he might know himself, but that the rest of us might know one another.

I have wandered just about the farthest of any of the 19 nieces and nephews, and in my travels I’ve come to depend more on friends than on family. I’d be hard-pressed to recognize some of my cousins if I met them on the New York City streets. Yet Johnnie’s plan makes sense to me. In time of trouble, reach out and find a Madison.

The generations who came before us managed to get one another through depressions and wars and bad Midwestern winters and even the good winters, which were never quite good enough for a preacher’s growing family. But that’s how it is. We’re no different from those earlier Madisons; it’s in our DNA. We don’t need to think about it. We’ll just do it.

For we are Madisons, and I know it. My uncle told me so.

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Reunions & Reinventions

Invention, reinvention, evolution, revolution:
Who are these geezers, anyway?
Bill, Jean, Suzanne, Karen, Larry’s daughter, Larry & Randy
(In the interest of privacy, I’m not using last names.)

My recent visit to Texas was marked by an informal class reunion, of the sort that my friends had enjoyed more officially one year ago. A few days later, when another friend, back East, exhorted me to reinvent myself, I realized that I might not require a reunion — at least, I might not require not the extra effort that went into this one — if I hadn’t already reinvented myself so completely. For 30 years, I have become less and less a Texan, until I had lost touch with all but one of the dear people who gathered around three tables at a café in Dallas; I have become more and more a New Englander, then a New Yorker, now (for a little while longer) an expatriate. And those are merely the reinventions of location, not counting those of politics and faith, profession and style and above all, sexuality. Thus when Elise says I must reinvent myself, I answer, “What, again? How long can I keep doing this?”

The fear is that one will lose something in the process of reinvention, and my friends were at pains to prove to me that this need not be the case. In truth, one of them has succeeded quite brilliantly in demonstrating that one may gain something in the reinvention: Lauren and I were rivals in junior high school, or so I thought; now in maturity I’m able to see us as peers, whose life experiences have been strikingly similar even when they were not shared.

Lauren & Bill

When we were children, Suzanne, Randy, and Larry were the funniest people I knew, reliably capable of making me dissolve in helpless laughter, and they still are. Jean was always a voice of sanity in irrational surroundings (though pushed to the brink, I grant you, she held her ground), and she still is; in fact, it is something very like her job description nowadays. I see in all these faces the kids we used to be: not much has changed, after all.*

Looking around the tables, I could reflect on the assurance that, while I may have missed out on these qualities among my friends, for lengthy periods of time, and while I may have missed out on my friends’ companionship, I haven’t lost them.

True, I won’t ever be godfather to Larry’s daughter (who speaks French) or to Jean’s sons (who are theater-mad, and who even look like me), as I am to Karen’s sons. But my resources, such as they are, are available upon demand, and there is a particular pleasure in meeting a young person for the first time and discovering connections and affinities. I had a charming conversation with Larry’s daughter, for example: she’s turned out beautifully without any influence from me, and that’s gratifying in its own way.

All of my friends had this in common: they offered me a refuge from the hostilities I faced daily as a boy. What possessed them to see in me the better qualities that eluded everyone else in school (and most of the rest of the state of Texas, it seemed), I don’t know. Already I had developed enough of the psychology of the victim to believe that there was abundant justification for the bullying I received. Looking back, I believe that I, too, would’ve found myself insufferable.

Bill, Suzanne & Jean

I couldn’t have remained as I was: at once naïf and pretentious, shrill, hyper-animated, even more confused than I was horny (which is saying something). Those traits are unattractive in a boy, and poisonous in a man. My friends must have been aware of them, and yet they looked past them. But in casting off those traits, I cast off those friends, too — more than I like to acknowledge.

It’s possible that I flatter myself as to the degree of my first reinvention. True, after the first week at Brown, nobody believed I was from Texas; but the fact that they universally mistook me for a kid from Connecticut may be less a reflection of my valiant attempt to resemble my roommate, Alan, than it was a reflection of “geographic distribution.”** And yet, would Elise herself have found the patience to put up with me if I too closely resembled the original Bill?

Perhaps so. For throughout my jaunt through the States, I encountered people who have put up with me for a very long time, through multiple reinventions. Some, like Elise and Karen, have done so without the benefit of long pauses; others have let me know unequivocally that, even after reinvention, I am not yet an easy person to be with. So I must cling to the hope that, no matter what happens, there will be someone to keep me company — and my friends in Texas suggest that the hope is not vain.

Larry & Randy

*NOTE: That said, Jean is taller by a head than I remembered her to be. Evidently she didn’t stand up often when we were in Mrs. Morini’s class.

**“Geographic distribution” is the principle whereby nearly everyone at Brown came from the Northeast; I’ve never doubted that I was admitted primarily because I was from Texas, in the administrators’ desire to add variety to the Class of ’83.

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More iPhone Problems, Jobs Admits

Visibly concerned: Jobs

Just days after Apple admitted that for years its phones had been exaggerating signal strength, the company again broke potentially damaging news in a second holiday-weekend press conference, when fewer Americans are paying attention. According to Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs said, the latest problem is an additional bug in the iPhone software, which he promised to fix soon.

“Despite our claims,” Jobs said, “the iPhone will not reliably make you invisible, no matter how many bars you see on the screen to indicate your own transparency. But we’re working to correct this problem.”

“This is highly inconvenient for me, since I just stole a blouse from Target,” said one iPhone customer when reached for comment. Arlene Rutherford, a Denver housewife and mother of two, told reporters, “I mean, it’s bad enough with all the security cameras around these days. But if I can’t trust the Apple brand, what will I do? There’s no reason to live anymore.”

Austin iPhone customer Bubba Pyle says he began to suspect that Apple iNviz™ software had a problem the third or fourth time he was arrested for allegedly breaking into the Pi Beta Phi sorority house after midnight.

Officials at the University of Texas at Austin informed him that iPhone iNviz™ technology actually makes it easier to keep him under constant surveillance, Pyle said, by tracking his every move and reporting him, depending on the circumstances, to campus police, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, or “The Mother Ship,” a little-known consumer-research organization based in Cupertino, CA.

At first, Pyle disregarded the warnings, he told reporters in a prepared statement. But now, “My parents are going to totally wail on my ass.”

“We realize that some customers may have purchased iPhones with the expectation of certain enhanced features,” Jobs said in a satellite press conference. “These include invisibility, increased sexual stamina, imperviousness to nuclear attack, and cleaner, fresher breath. We stand by our claims: the iPhone can do all these things. And it will, some day. We just need to fine-tune, which means that customers themselves may need to pitch in a little bit, whether by eating more oysters, brushing regularly between meals, or wearing tinfoil hats.

“In the meantime,” Jobs continued, “we’re still compatible with lots of really cool apps. Everybody likes apps, right?”

Reached for comment at MorinIcorp Headquarters in Dallas, rival tech CEO Anna Morini admitted that her product, the morinIphone, does not provide reliable customer invisibility, either.

“However,” Morini said, “our product itself is invisible. You can claim to have any special feature you can imagine on your morinIphone, and who’s going to tell you you’re lying? It’s not as if they can check. And at only $5,000 per unit, the morinIphone is a steal.”

Also visible: A French iPhone

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La Première Année de Cuisine, Part 18

After a brief pause, Madeleine resumes her journal — and I resume my translating.

MADELEINE’S JOURNAL

NINETEENTH ENTRY

In the country, it’s necessary to rise early. — Preserving sorrel. — Preserving eggs. — Cornichons in vinegar. — Goose preserved in its own fat.

One fine morning, about fifteen days after my arrival in Valfleury, Tante Victoire awoke me at the break of day.

“Quickly, quickly,” she said. “The weather is lovely, yesterday’s rainstorm has washed the herbs in the garden, we must gather our provision of sorrel and begin our preserves.” [The lexicon at the back of the book defines “preserves” (French: conserves, often used in the singular) as “cooked or raw alimentary substances preserved in jars or cans and hermetically sealed.”]

It was true! I had forgotten that for the past five or six days we had been awaiting a day of nice weather in order to gather the sorrel and to make the winter provisions. I dressed myself without delay and I went down into the garden to do my little harvesting.


The weather was magnificent. Everywhere a delicious odor made of the scent of plants and of the perfume of flowers; a healthy odor of lavender, of thyme, of laurel, with which was mixed the delicate aroma of roses and of heliotropes, Tante Victoire’s preferred flowers.

How nice it was! I didn’t regret rising at the same time as the sun! And to think that at home I have to grab myself by the ear in order to be on my feet at 6:30 or 7 o’clock.

I set about to work, plucking the sorrel leaf by leaf, astonished that it was so tender, and that there was not the slightest leaf wilted. I asked Tante Victoire the reason for this.

“I took the precaution,” she answered me, “to cut the sorrel to the base at the end of the month of August, that is to say, a month ago, and that is why everything we have here is young and tender, it’s always necessary to proceed this way when one wishes to obtain good sorrel for preserving.”

Our baskets being filled, we returned to the kitchen where we brought our harvest. The contents of our baskets were spilled on the table before which I sat, so that I could prepare the sorrel for washing. I took the leaves one by one, I broke off the stem of each, which is always a bit tough, and I threw them into a big bowl of water. They were thus cleaned, then washed several times in cold water.

Tante Victoire then put the sorrel in a kettle, with very little water over a very high flame. The sorrel softened immediately and diminished in volume. Then we removed it from the kettle with the help of a skimmer, and we placed it on a mat where it drained. When it was thoroughly drained, we returned it to the kettle without adding any water (since the sorrel still contained enough of it) and we let it cook over a low flame while stirring it often, so that it wouldn’t stick.

Madeleine seems positively obsessed with sorrel.
Americans are probably more familiar with Sorrell.
(By coincidence, Buddy’s wife’s name is Pickles, another subject of today’s lesson.)

When it had reached the consistency of a thick porridge, we poured it into earthenware pots, where it cooled. Once it was completely cold, Tante Victoire poured some melted butter over it.

“Why this last step?” I said to Tante Victoire.

“My dear child,” she said to me, that which spoils things is contact with the air. The butter that I am pouring here is going to cool in its turn, forming on top of the sorrel a thick coating through which the air will not pass, and the sorrel will be preserved.

“Tomorrow we shall busy ourselves with a small provision of eggs, to preserve them; you will see that we shall take analogous precautions.”

There was nothing left for us but to seal the pots, which we did with the use of very sturdy paper.

“There, that is finished,” said Tante Victoire. “You will notice, Madeleine, that I used very small pots for this preserve, since it is necessary, as much as possible, not to keep too long a pot that has been opened. Eight days, fifteen days at the most are enough to make bitter the sorrel that remains in the pots, and it becomes unusable.”

“That is a very good precaution,” I said, “and I shall remember it.”

The next day, as Tante Victoire had said, we busied ourselves with the eggs. For eight days, the hens had furnished us a full basket, which we had not even touched.

We took the eggs one by one and we wrapped them each separately in a piece of fairly fine paper. Then we arranged them in layers in a box that we filled progressively with wood cinders, taking good care to fill all the empty spaces. The case being full, without our being able to see any bit of paper, it was shut and placed in a corner of the cellar.

Tante Victoire told me that one could also preserve eggs by using bran instead of cinders; or else by coating each egg with wax, or in letting them soak in great bowls of hot water.*

“You see that, in reality,” Tante Victoire said to me, “what one wants above all in using these diverse means is to protect the eggs from the air, as I explained to you when we preserved our sorrel.:

The whole week passed thus in making different preserves. I am going to write down here the manner in which we preserved cornichons in vinegar.

Remove the stem of the cornichons, wipe them with a rough cloth, place them in a bowl and cover them with coarse salt. When they have remained this way for twenty-four hours, drain them, place them in large, wide-mouthed jars or in earthenware pots, adding peppercorns, one or two cloves, some thyme, some bay leaf, some tarragon, and pour over this some cold vinegar, until they are covered.

Some people, Tante Victoire has told me, stop there, others remove the cornichons from the vinegar after three days, then boil them an instant in new vinegar. Only then do they hermetically seal the container, not to reopen it until the cornichons are good, that is to say eight or fifteen days later.

But the biggest job was the preparation of the confit.

Tante Victoire kept in the country a few beautiful geese, all of which she couldn’t have eaten up before our return to town. So she thought of preserving them and of making of them what we call confit. This is the flesh of goose, of duck, or of pork preserved in fat.

The geese having been killed, plucked, cleaned, we left them three days without cutting them up.

“Why?” said I to Tante Victoire.

“Because the flesh of geese freshly killed is so fatty and so tender that it’s difficult to cut with a knife. On the contrary, if one lets them wait two or three days, they dry out, firm up again, then one can easily remove the wings and their white meat, and the thighs, without ruining the sinews of the carcass.”

This is just what Tante Victoire did. She cut up the four members of the goose, removed the fat which was found upon the rest of the body and set it aside. Then she seasoned the wings and the thighs with salt, pepper, thyme, and chopped bay leaf, she placed them in earthenware pots, in such a manner that there was no empty space between the pieces. The meat remained in this salting then for twenty to thirty hours.

During this time, we prepared the fat destined to cover the meat. We melted the goose fat in a kettle over a low flame, with a few pieces of bacon and a bit of water. Next, we removed from the salting the members of the geese, we wiped them off and we placed them in this melted fat where they cooked slowly.

“And how shall we know when they are cooked enough?” I asked of Tante Victoire.

“We shall thrust into it this fork, the tines of which are slender and pointed. If the fork passes easily through the confit, that one is cooked enough.”

The experiment having succeeded, the confit was removed and placed again in some pots. Into these pots, we poured the fat in which the confit had cooked, but we waited for that to cool a bit. The pots were then deposed in a corner of the kitchen until the end of the week, after which, the fat being perfectly fixed, we covered them with paper, and we carried them to the cellar.

One thing however intrigued me: how would one eat the goose members thus preserved? I questioned Tante Victoire about this, and she answered me:

“You will come to lunch with me one day next winter, and you will see.”

“But, Aunt, I would really like not to wait until that moment in order to find out.”

“Perhaps you are right,” said Tante Victoire, smiling. “Don’t put off to be learned tomorrow that which we can find out the same day. Here then is how I will use my goose quarters, as folks here say:

“I shall thrust a long fork into the pot, I shall remove from it a piece which I shall ‘brown’ in a frying pan. I shall serve it dry [i.e., without a sauce], or of course with a purée of sorrel or of potatoes. Sometimes I place a goose quarter in the cabbage soup, which makes a delicious broth.”

“But,” said I, “when you remove a goose thigh, for example, from the pot where it is placed, do you not risk uncovering the other pieces?”

“Quite right,” said Tante Victoire, “and so I take care to remove a good piece of fat from the pot, to melt it and to pour it over the place from which the piece was removed.”

“And when there remains no more confit in the pots, what does one do with the fat?”

“One uses it for cooking, instead of butter, and I assure you that it is delicious.”**

What a busy week! … Truly, Tante Victoire was right: I am not wasting my time in Valfleury and I am learning many useful things.

A sorrel omelette in the making.
This appetizing illustration accompanies the Wikipedia entry on “omelette.”

WHAT I MUST DO

[To copy and to keep]

1. Whenever I serve eggs to people in delicate health, I shall give them œufs à la coque instead of hardboiled eggs, these being heavy to the digestion.

2. I shall remember that œufs à la coque must be cooked twice:
First time: one minute and a half in boiling water, on the fire.
Second time: one minute and a half in this same water, off the fire.

3. I shall remember that an omelette is not properly cooked unless it remains soft and juicy.

4. When I am in the country, I shall observe the good habit of rising early.

5. I shall remember that sorrel good for preserving must be young and tender, otherwise it will have a bitter, too-sour taste.

6. I shall not forget that, in order to preserve vegetables, eggs, or meats for a long time, it is necessary to protect them from contact with the air.

7. I shall place in pots smaller rather than large those foods that I wish to preserve, so that they do not risk remaining too long once they have been opened.

8. To preserve sorrel, I shall cook it and I shall place it in pots, covered with a layer of melted butter.

9. To preserve eggs, I shall wrap them one by one in paper, then I will bury them in cinders or in bran.

10. To preserve the meat of goose, of turkey, of duck, of pork, I shall cook it in fat, I shall place it in pots and I shall pour over it the cooking fat that has cooled a bit.

11. To preserve cornichons, I shall wipe them with care, I shall keep them in a bowl under salt for twenty-four hours, then I shall remove them from there in order to put them in vinegar with other condiments.

12. I shall not put off to be learned tomorrow that which I can find out the same day.

Next time: Madeleine learns how to polish copper, wrought-iron, and tin pots. (Oh, and there are some tips on preparing fish, too.)

CHAPTER XI

Eggs.

125. Eggs constitute an excellent food, nourishing and light at the same time. They are suitable to everyone, but particularly to delicate stomachs.

126. There is a very great number of methods for preparing eggs. The most ordinary are:
Œufs à la coque.
Hard-boiled eggs.
Fried eggs.
Eggs in an omelette.

127. Œufs à la coque. — Plunge them into the water while it is boiling. Leave them on the fire for one minute and a half. Remove the saucepan and leave them in the water, off the fire, for another minute and a half. This second part of the operation permits the eggs to make their milk, that is to say that the egg white, instead of hardening, remains liquid and takes on the appearance of milk.

128. Hard-boiled eggs. — To harden eggs, leave them five minutes in boiling water. Then remove them, remove the shell and cut each egg in two or in four pieces. Cut this way, the eggs are arranged upon a purée of sorrel or added to a lettuce salad, etc.

129. Fried eggs. — Put butter in a dish on the fire; let it melt without browning, gently break the eggs, arranging them next to each other while taking care not to break the yolk. Salt,*** let cook over low flame, and remove from the fire when the albumen is cooked everywhere, without its becoming hard.

130. Eggs in an omelette. — To make an omelette, break some eggs in a bowl, white and yolk together.
Elsewhere, one has placed on the fire a good piece of butter in a skillet. While it melts, beat the eggs with a fork, without forgetting to salt them with fine salt.**** The butter being hot without browning, pour into the skillet the beaten eggs. Let them “set,” then, from place to place one raises the omelette a bit to avoid its sticking to the skillet and to let the butter circulate everywhere.
When the omelette is cooked enough, that is to say when the egg is half-liquid, tilt the skillet obliquely. The omelette should slide to the edge of the skillet and there, with the tip of a fork, one folds it in two, in a single gesture. Then place it on a long dish.

131. In order to vary omelettes, one varies the elements that one incorporates with the eggs. Sometimes these are chopped fines herbes that one adds to the eggs before beating them, sometimes mushrooms cut into small pieces that one cooks for an instant in the skillet, sometimes small pieces of bacon, sometimes fried croûtons, sometimes jam that one adds just before folding the omelette.

Julia Child makes an omelette.

*TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: Anybody want to try this at home and let the rest of us know how it turns out? I confess I’m not brave enough.

**Oh, is she right about that!

***Sacré bleu! Jacques Pépin says that salting eggs while cooking them is a sure-fire way to end up with tough eggs. Jacques advises us to wait until the eggs are ready to serve before salting them — my egg dishes have been notably tastier ever since.

****Again with the salt! Beyond that disputable instruction, this is one of the more inscrutable descriptions of omelette-making I’ve ever encountered.

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Progress Report 8: Madeline Kahn

As Musetta, with Alan Titus as Marcello.
Washington, DC, March 1970
Photo courtesy of Jeffrey Kahn. Used with permission.

For reasons of space, the editors of OPERA NEWS cut the anecdote with which I led off “Sweet Mystery,” my feature article on Madeline Kahn’s singing career in the July 2010 issue of that magazine. But it’s too good to pass by, so I’m sharing it now, while it’s timely.

In describing Madeline’s impact on popular culture — and, in particular, the impact of her brief rendition of Victor Herbert’s “Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life” in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein — I got corroboration from a distinguished but somewhat surprising source, Bill Cosby.

“I remember performing during the time when [Young Frankenstein] came out,” Dr. Cosby said during our telephone conversation last year. “She hit that note. In those days, I was selling out 14 thousand-seaters. I’d be talking and doing my monologue, and people would be laughing. And I remember at least 15 different cities where some woman in the balcony during the laughter would hit that note. Women were copying that note.”

The girl can’t help it:
Singing Musetta’s waltz.
Photo courtesy of Jeffrey Kahn. Used with permission.

I expressed my surprise. In late 1974 and early 1975, there was no reason to make a mental link between Madeline Kahn and Bill Cosby: they wouldn’t work together for another two decades, and the black sheriff in Blazing Saddles was Cleavon Little, after all.

“I’m telling you the truth!” Dr. Cosby insisted, and as he explained, the link turns out to have been pleasure.

“That note became a classic. All around the United States, women knew, as far as I’m concerned, what that note was. Madeline Kahn hit the very positive — just the opposite of a Woody Allen orgasm.” Here, Dr. Cosby gave a wicked chuckle.

“People would be laughing at something I was saying, and my act was not sexually driven, but the woman would always be up in the balcony — it was always somebody up, it wasn’t anybody on the floor, I guess because the lights were on ’em. A woman! I guess — you have to take for granted it was a woman. You’d have to be to hit that note. When I remember that scene, in at least nine or whatever number I gave you, cities, they would hit that note.”

Co-stars at last: Kahn, Cosby, & Phylicia Rashad,
In the good doctor’s most recent sitcom.

Though some credit must go to the scriptwriters, Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks, Dr. Cosby believes that Madeline’s singing signaled a change in the way that women’s sexuality was depicted onscreen.*

“I want to go over this,” Dr. Cosby continued, “because psychologically, she did something with that note. When you think about directors, and cutting to fireplaces, cutting to — even in comedy, there have been some moments where they’ve taken landslides, snowslides, and things trees collapsing and you know, birds fly — flocks. But never that note that woman sang! It was just that note. And if you listen to it, it’s the build-up, and then she hit that note.

“Forget about it. Women all around these United States, women would do it in the audience, and the place would collapse.”

She wasn’t an opera star, but she played one
in Gene Wilder’s Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother.

For the rest of what Dr. Cosby told me, you’ll have to wait a bit longer. For now, suffice to say that, from the start, Madeline’s musicality has seemed to me the foundation of her artistry, and learning more about it has been especially rewarding.

Thus far, I’ve been able to interview the baritone Alan Titus and the tenor William Lewis, two of her operatic co-stars; one of her voice teachers, Marlena Malas; her frequent coach and adviser, Michael Cohen; and her mother, Paula Kahn, herself an aspiring singer, who gave Madeline her first music lessons.**

Madeline’s family, friends, and colleagues also have helped me to understand the importance of music in her life, both professionally and privately. And I’ve discovered that musically-minded people — such as Bill Cosby himself — are among Madeline’s biggest admirers.

Though I have yet to find a publisher — and in truth we’re waiting for the industry to settle down a bit before shopping the biography around — I’m still at work. If you run out to your local newsstand and buy lots of copies of the July issue of OPERA NEWS (or, better yet, subscribe!), you’ll be helping to prove that, yes, there’s a market for this book.

In Vecchi’s Amfiparnaso at Hofstra University, 1964.
Photo courtesy of Jeffrey Kahn. Used with permission.

*NOTE: For those who don’t know the film, Madeline’s character, Elizabeth, bursts into “Ah! Sweet Mystery” when the Monster (Peter Boyle) ravishes her; Inga (Teri Garr) sings a reprise in the honeymoon scene at the end of the movie.

**Regrettably, Paula Kahn demurred when I asked if she’d give me a voice lesson. Now who do you suppose told her how badly I sing?

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