Tag Archive for 'mfkfisher'

“…one proof that we are human…”

Published on October 25, 2006 in Food and Muse. 1 Comment Tags: .

“… They will feel, until their final days on earth, a kind of culinary caution: butter, no matter how unlimited, is a precious substance not lightly to be wasted; meats, too, and eggs, and all the far-brought spices of the world, take on a new significance, having once been so rare. And that is good, for there can be no more shameful carelessness than with the food we eat for life itself. When we exist without thought or thanksgiving we are not men, but beasts.

War is a beastly business, it is true, but one proof that we are human is our ability to learn, even from it, how better to exist. If this book, written in one wartime, still goes on helping to solve that unavoidable problem, it is worth reading again, no matter what its quaint superficiality, it’s sometims unintentionally grim humor.”

Somehow that seems to fit these days. I’m not sure most of the first paragraph is necessary to establish the contect. But I’ll see if I can fit it on a quotes page.

Bonus points to whoever recognizes the original author.

Consider the Oyster

Published on August 4, 2005 in Food and Muse. 0 Comments Tags: , .

“Far removed as this recipe [Oysters a la Foch, involving 6 oysters but 5 different sauces] may seem from the ordinary kitchen’s possibilities, it still has not that fabulous quality of the rule quoted by everyone from Richelieu’s chef to Crosby Gaige, in which you put one thing inside another until you have somthing more or less the size of an elephant, then roast the whole, and finally throw away all but the innermost thing. For instance, you start with an oyster. You put it inside a large olive, then you put the olive inside an ortolan (a wee bird called “the garden bunting,” in case you are among the underprivileged), and the ortolan inside a lark, and so on and so on. In the end, you have a roasted oyster. Or perhaps a social revolution.”

– “The Well-Dressed Oyster”, by M.F.K. Fisher

Ah, food writing. MFK is my favorite, at least among the writers. Julia is my favorite among the cooks: my hero of food, actually. Who are the people that really made something more of the world for you? Julia ranks up there, and I regret never having realized it early enough to have tried to get lucky and see her on the streets of Cambridge or shopping at Savenor’s or the like.

But at least I’ve seen her kitchen. One trip to D.C., one half day, only time for one museum. Which one did I choose? American History – because they had the Julia Child’s Kitchen exhibit that month! They took her entire kitchen – her home one, not the other TV one – and recreated it. And I mean the entire kitchen – including her telephone books, and the bit of handwritten masking tape on the back of the phone reminding her of something. It was wonderful.