Sunday 27 February 2011

Treasure trove!

Bound copies of 'Cuisine et Vins de France' for the entire period from April 1965 through until the end of 1973. The Technical Dept found them languishing on French ebay - apparently having spent the last few decades gathering dust in an attic in Besancon - and he snapped up the lot! Quite apart from this covering the years during which Richard Olney was writing for the magazine, it is an absolute Aladdin's cave of 'new' material. Logically, you'd think that anything good from that period would have made it into the culinary firmament and long ago become tried-and-trusted and thoroughly familiar - but in practice, it doesn't seem to work like that: I've recently been digging through a couple of books of recipes by Simone Beck, dating from the early seventies, and have unearthed one previously (to me) unknown gem after another in the process. Cuisine et Vins promises many, many excellent things...
With sources like that available, it makes me even more jaded when contemplating the endless quantities of glossy offerings from the likes of Nigella and Angela and Delia and Gordon...where (although I confess, I don't actually own any, but I have glanced at them in bookshops, on occasion) it seems that a few rather obvious ideas are being milked ever more painfully to death. 
And yesterday morning, it was with horrified fascination that I listened on Radio 4 to somebody who called themselves a 'food futurologist' wittering on about 'popcorn, coated in white belgian chocolate, served with strawberries', and extolling the apparent virtues of cupcakes. Pitiful!

Tonight's Dinner:

Steamed and fried Gyoza with vinegar dressing

Celery Risotto




3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That will keep you busy for some time. Such a lot of rubbish spoken and written about food nowadays - popcorn and chocolate? Cupcakes? Pah, I despair!

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Sorry, double posting.