One of the packages left under the tree for me this Christmas was an early edition of Alice B Toklas' renowned cook-book. Although, over the years, I've occasionally come across references to recipes from it , I confess I've never before actually seen a copy - and it is an absolute delight! Doubly so in that it is an early enough edition to contain 'her' recipe for 'Haschich Fudge', printed before the publishers realised what it actually was and hastily pulled it from all later versions....In fact, it was a recipe given to Toklas by a friend of hers, an artist called Byron (or Bri
on, or Brian - nobody seems entirely clear on the detail) Gysin (or Gysen, as he appears in the Penguin edition). Alice B, in her innocence, included it in full, and the people at Penguin - presumably, equally wet behind the ears when it came to recreational drugs - faithfully reproduced it in the published work. It was only when some slightly more savvy reviewers got to grips with the text that the truth emerged, and the red faces that followed must have been a sight to behold....To anybody who lived through the seventies, the recipe is nothing more nor less than a variation of Hash Brownies!
It's too long to include here in full, but the highlights of the text - which Gysin airily describes as something 'which anyone could whip up on a rainy day' - are
as follows:'This is the food of Paradise - of Baudelaire's Artificial Paradises: it might provide an entertaining refreshment for a Ladies' Bridge Club or a chapter meeting of the DAR*........' .'.....Euphoria and brilliant storms of laughter, ecstatic reveries and extensions of one's personality on several simultaneous planes are to be complacently expected. Almost anything Saint Teresa did you can do better if you can bear to be ravished by un évanouissement réveillé.......'
* Daughters of the American Revolution.
And on, and on...
The whole thing is made even more delicious by the fact that the recipe is featured in a c
hapter of 'recipes from friends', where the other contributors are people like 'The Late Lord Berners', 'The Princesse de Rohan', and various, presumably high profile, knights of the realm. It's hard to tell, but Alice B doesn't immediately strike one as someb
ody with a great sense of humour, and it seems unlikely that she appreciated the joke once it had been revealed. One could say it serves her right for lazy editing.......Ho hum.....
Tonight's dinner:
Tart of Aubergine, Anchovies and Parmesan
Saltimbocca alla Romana, with Carrots in Marsala
Orange & Ricotta Cheesecake
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