Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Yes! Many thanks to you, John, and to Ed, along with the many other
participants who helped make this conversation such a treat.
  

    
And <debunix>, last year right about this time I spent two days on a
fantastic recipe from Cooking of Southwestern France, the Paula Wolfert
book, on a kind of porc au vin, although it might also have had beans
in it. Can't check, because it's packed, but it was good enough that
even though it took two days (the first day, as I remember, was
probably soaking the beans and maybe pre-cooking the meat some), I'd
have gladly spent a week waiting for something that good to happen. 
  

    
Hmm......I think I checked the index on that one, and maybe missed
that if hte title wasn't obvious enough.  I saw lots of recipes in my
french cookbooks for cassoulet, and for various roasts, but virtually
none with simpler-sounding pork stew.
  

    
Wolfert also has this totally killer coddled pork recipe in The Slow
Mediterranean. But again, slow is key.  It's like confit but in olive
oil. Oh the joy. I must make it again.
  

    
This has been one of the best conversations ever on the Well.  Thanks,
John, and thanks to everyone who took part.  I just wish there was
some way we could keep the Outlaw Cook here...  
  

    
Well, if we can't keep him here, you can certainly invite him to your
house every now and again (allegedly bimonthly, but...) by subscribing
to Simple Cooking. That way you get the next book piecemeal, plus the
ongoing saga of the No-Name Diner and the guest contributions by his
distinguished friends. 

And no, I don't get a kickback. 
  

    
SIMPLE PORK STEW WITH WINE. The problem here is one of space, I think,
more than anything. Look up pork in the index of French cookbooks and
you find that meat offered in the form of roasts and chops, ground into
sausage, and cured into ham. I glance into the Time/Life Good Cook
volume on pork, and find that while the index lists ten stew recipes,
among them only three that fall in the "simple, with wine" category:
Italian pork stew (red wine); French pork and chestnut stew (white
wine); and a Spanish braise of pork with cumin (white wine). (Pork
braised with beer, a Czech dish, should get honorable mention.) This in
a cookbook wholly devoted to pork: so what are the odds in any
cookbook where pork is just one meat of several? Pretty slim. I have
almost a hundred French cookbooks, and I looked through some likely
titles to no avail. If someone pointed a gun at my head and told me I
had one chance to pick a French cookbook with a pork stew in it, I
would have chosen Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking. And I
might have gotten shot, because the one stew with pork in it gives that
meat as an alternative to hare! I read the recipe with astonishment:
it is one of the first complicated dishes I ever cooked, and probably
one of the first Elizabeth David recipes I tried, as well. To me, then,
the interesting thing about the stew was that it had a square of
chocolate in it, used as a thickener and to add a touch of sweetness to
the dish. I served it to company, perhaps the first time I formally
entertained. The dish was much praised, but the real interest lay in
the loaves of "French" bread I baked to serve with it, that being a
rare and wonderful thing in the early seventies.
  

    
Thank you, John, Ed, and everyone for a lively and stimulating
conversation.

John - Just subscribed to SC, and eagerly await my first issue!

On the tender gum front, I just made some baked mac and cheese with a
white sauce. On a whim, I added some diced roasted peppers and
portabello mushrooms. Just ate most of a quantity intended to serve
six, and washed it down with a pint of Guinness. I don't know what this
meal says about my sense of appropriate combinations of textures,
flavors, etc., but my gums are happy, and so am I. 
  

    
Pasta with mushrooms and peppers in cheese sauce--an entirely
respectable sort of dish!

And thanks for confirming my speculations about the pork stew, John. 
I suspect it's just too basic, and everyone feels the need to have coq
au vin instead.

And who knew Elizabeth David was making mole?  Wonder where the bit of
chocolate came from in that recipe--perusing mexican recipes, or from
an enterprising french cook who came up with it independently?
  

    
ELIZABETH DAVID. Here's what she says about the use of the chocolate:
"As for the chocolate, of which rather less than an ounce is needed, it
is not an uncommon ingredient in Italian and Spanish cookery,
particularly in hare dishes, and is there as a sweetening and
thickening for the sauce. Its use perhaps filtered down to the
Bordelais through the channel of Basque and Béarnais cookery. And
Bayonne, for generations one of the great chocolate manufacturing
centres of France, is not far off."
  

    
Martin: thanks for subscribing! Your first issue will be off to you on
Monday. (On Saturday I do house cleaning.) Your comments about the mac
and cheese reminds me of another gum-friendly delicacy, grilled cheese
sandwiches, which I LOVE when made with the addition of roasted red
peppers. And if the grilled layer is too hard on the gums, dip the
sandwich the roasted pepper juice (or in the liquid in a jar of —
preferably homemade — bread and butter pickles. 
  

    
Now wondering if the wonderful rabbit sauce I had with pasta in
Florence might have had a touch of chocolate....it was quite amazingly
delicious.
  

    
Do a Google search using "rabbit chocolate sauce" and a lot comes
up... not all of it relevant, of course, but still. Check this recipe
out: http://tinyurl.com/265td6
  

    
Rabbit, prawns, peppers, AND chocolate?   Looks killer. 

and interesting comment about "the long tradition of using chocolate
in catalan cooking."
  

    
What a great first Well conference for me! Thank you all and
especially John, of course. John, you're very much an inspiration of
mine and it's been a real treat for me to "converse" with you in this
manner. I've met and worked with plenty of food celebrity-types but no
one's cooking excites my imagination so much.

I will be grabbing a copy of MWO to round out the John Thorne section
of my food library--although I have so much catching up to do on my
gastronomic reading that it'll be a while before I get to it. I'm also
subscribing to Simple Cooking once Fiance and I get settled. 

Happy New Year to all! Rachel 
  

    
I hate endings. Can't we all just have dinner?
  

    
John, this really has been an extraordinary run.  You have been so generous
with your time and knowledge.  I wish you'd stay on in the WeLL as a member
and hang out in our cooking conference (or writier's conference or any other
conference that might interest you).

have a wonderful New Year, and please let us know when your next book is
published. We'd love to have you back.
  

    
Dinner is a good idea. I see the waiters sulking in the shadows, all
the other tables stripped of linen, our table alone oblivious to
evening's end, mellowed with an after-dinner brandy, stoked with a few
too many "last cups" of coffee, scraping a few last morsels from the
cheese rinds, talking and laughing and keeping the night at bay. Thanks
to everyone of you for a stimulating, memorable conversation. 
  

    
PS It's after midnight here; the new year has begun! Wishing you all a
joyous one. 
  

    
Well, that was fun. Logging in from a cafe because my phone's not
hooked up yet, and echoing the feelings of all. 

Yeah, let's do it again sometime.
  

    

Absolutely! You're welcome back any time, John!
  

    
You can listen to John making scrambled eggs here. 

<http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wfcr/local-wfcr-676926.mp3>

After which, it's pretty hard not to do likewise!
  

    
What a wonderful treat that interview is! 
  

    
So glad you stopped in to read it.
  

    <scribbled by dana>