Happiness is the new cookbook Simple French Food, by Richard Olney (435 pp., illustrated, Atheneum, $10). I recommend it as the perfect Christmas present for anybody who likes to cook or even to read about food. I hasten to say that this includes nonlovers of French food, such as my husband—who once told Julia Child he did not like French food, at which remark the lady laughed. Very nearly over his dead body (he does not like cookbooks either) I persuaded him to read this one, and he fell for it totally— marking the recipes he wants me to cook, such as Creamed Noodles with Ham and Vegetables, Gratin of Lamb Chops and Vegetables, Sauteed Chicken and Fennel, Braised Chicken Legs with Lemon, and about two dozen others. I have so far cooked all the dishes mentioned by name here, and the food is sheer bliss; besides, it is not hard to cook, and not expensive either.
Author Richard Olney is an American from Iowa who has lived in France for over twenty years, in a small hilltop house in the Var in southern France, which appeals to his aesthetic sense (he is also a painter). One gathers that this is Provence at its loveliest: the scent of wild thyme, a vegetable and herb garden, grape arbors, a large fireplace to cook in and warm oneself by, and no telephone. I said of his first book, The French Menu Cookbook, that this is the way la douce France eats; the book was as evocative of French living as anything I’d seen in print. If possible, this new book is even more so. Aside from Elizabeth David, the greatest of all food writers, and author of French Provincial Cooking, there is no writer I know who so brings to life the uncomplicated French food we are all nostalgic about, the food the French cook in their homes and small country restaurants. What’s more, it is food that can be reproduced over here; admittedly, it will not be as flavorful here as in Provence, but it will still be the best French home cooking there is. (Only fools attempt haute cuisine in their home kitchens.)
Comments