With Love and Quiches (33 page)

In Halong Bay, Hai Phong, we took a boat trip in a fabulous old wooden boat where we were entertained by small floating rafts spilling over with produce: floating grocery stores from which children climbed up to our windows hawking their wares. It was very touristy and we loved it.

We took a holiday in Egypt, way up there on our bucket list, which we had planned long before the Arab Spring and all the calamitous events taking place all across the Middle East. We took this trip in spite of almost everybody we know asking us if we had lost our minds.
Actually, we watched Khadafi meet his end on CNN while in Cairo, which in a way was quite surreal, since Libya was right next door.

Our experience was brilliant. We were a very small group of six plus an Egyptologist, along with an armed guard! We visited Cairo, and during a Nile cruise, we stopped in Abu Simbel, Aswan, Esna, Luxor, and Dendera. Egypt’s history spans thousands of years, and the antiquities we saw were exquisite and awe inspiring.

We arrived in Cairo a day early, as is our practice, so that we could spend some time touring the city with an eye toward seeing as much as we could about our favorite subject: the food. We hired Azza as our private guide that first day, and we visited a small and ancient bakery with ovens even blacker than in the cashew factory in India; saw a typical local supermarket; and walked through a vast
souk
where the locals did most of their daily shopping. In Cairo almost all of the food is displayed right on the sidewalks: neat piles, gorgeous fruits and vegetables—especially the tomatoes, which taste like pure sugar—along with the spices, the fish, and the meat. There was simply
no
refrigeration whatsoever. Wherever we looked there was food being displayed, all over the city, everywhere. There were small herds of sheep near each butcher shop with hanging meat up front: tomorrow’s dinner for sure. We saw very few European-style bakeries of the kind we encountered in India and Vietnam, but workers were constantly carrying huge trays of fresh warm
pita
and
lavash
breads to various destinations all over the city.

Cairo is by far the dirtiest city we have ever seen during our travels. Debris is everywhere! In India, by contrast, garbage is an industry and nothing is wasted: There are even vast piles of
neat
garbage, with all the scraps of fabric, food, metals, and so on sorted to be sold or otherwise used.

The food was excellent everywhere we went. We had two memorable and typical Egyptian meals while in Cairo. One was at a restaurant named Abou el Cid, an atmospheric and elegant place where there was a hookah at every table, all placed low to the ground with
couches for seating. They offered a specialty called
haman
, rice-stuffed whole pigeon, but I opted for the grilled quail instead, and we shared many other typical Egyptian dishes that the waiter suggested along with tons of the ubiquitous hot, fresh pita bread. Another typical local meal we had was at a famous place called Andrea, where they have their own pita oven and bring out fresh hot ones every few minutes. Their specialties are spit-roasted chicken and myriad Middle Eastern salads and hors d’oeuvres. They showered us with so much food, and we shared it all with the thousand flies that visited the outdoor patio where we were seated.

Our Nile River cruise ship was a luxurious yacht with accommodations for thirty-six passengers, but there were only the six of us and a staff of forty-five, down from fifty-eight.

I toured the kitchen, and the chef did a cooking demonstration for the few of us who were there. I noticed during the tour that the double convection oven, a major space saver, was the exact one that I had in my garage when I started out almost forty years ago. It was a newer model, of course, but essentially the same, and it made me smile.

The best word I can use to describe the Nile is
lush
. It was unbelievably verdant on both sides for at least ten miles, with sugar cane, corn, and many other crops and vegetables as far as the eye could see.

Back in Cairo we did a lot of walking through the ancient thoroughfares of the old city and wandered around in the Khan El-Kahlili market, Cairo’s vast street market, with its tourist traps as well as its aromatic spice shops and food stalls where all the locals shop daily.

For us, nothing is more intrinsic to a place than its food, which conveys its true essence. But in Egypt the antiquities may have surpassed anything else.

In 2012 we traveled the western coast of Europe from the Normandy region (to see the World War II landing beaches) in France all the
way down to Lisbon, with a great stop in Cork, Ireland. All a bit closer to home.

In London we had dinner in
the
hot restaurant of the moment, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal. They serve classic English fare, sourcing some of their dishes from cookbooks that date as far back as the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. It was Irwin’s birthday, and we decided beforehand to forget there were such things as calories. We most often head for the most “in” restaurants in any city we find ourselves in, but lately we seem to notice we are almost always the oldest people in the room. I guess this is because older people usually take the easy way out and eat in their hotels. Not us.

We started with something called Meat Fruit: chicken liver parfait in a preserved mandarin orange shell with grilled bread. It was silky smooth and ethereal, and I am sure it had as much butter and cream in it as liver because I used to do the same thing when I would cook for my friends way back in the early seventies. Then we shared a Bone-in-Rib with mushroom ketchup and triple cooked chips from
The Cook and Housewife’s Manual
by Mistress Meg Dods, dating from 1830. I commented to the waiter that the “chips” were the best I had ever tasted, and he revealed that this was because they were cooked in beef fat. Uh oh! But it was worth it because they made any other fries totally irrelevant. I am sure they used another of my old methods of gently but constantly shaking the potatoes while frying them; this allows them to absorb a lot more oil and become super crisp, as well as super deadly.

Although the restaurant offered such things as Quaking Pudding from
The Accomplisht Cooke
by Robert May (1660) and Tarte of Strawberries from the
Book of Cookrye Very necessary for all such as Delight therin
by A. W. (1591), we resisted dessert. They brought us a plateful of cookies anyway.

By the time we got back to our hotel, we were so full that we were almost ready to go back home to New York.

In Cork, Ireland, in defiance of its reputation, it was brilliantly sunny. Here we saw bakery after bakery. Wherever we turned, it seemed there
was at least one or two on every block. All the offerings were a bit more homespun, less elegant and jewel-like than you would find, for example, in Paris. But they were hand finished, overstuffed, and luscious looking—and there were lots of quiches, to my great delight.

From Cork, we crossed the sea to the Continent. We were traveling by small ship for this trip, a great way to cover a lot of ground without having to pack and unpack over and over. The first thing I did once we arrived on the ship was to introduce myself to the chef, a thirty-one year old guy from Belgium. His kitchen was small and incredibly clean, and absolutely
everything
he made was from scratch: all the stocks, breads, pastries, sauces, stews, and so on. We got very used to having just-out-of-the-oven scones with clotted cream and jam every afternoon.

Bordeaux is wine country, and we visited Chateau Giscours for a tour of the winery, a lesson on wine making, a tasting, and an elegant dinner. We traveled to get there through mile upon mile of vineyards, where we noticed the soil was sandy and dry so that the vines had to
struggle
for the roots to go deep. At Giscours all the grapes are picked by hand and then x-rayed to identify any fruit that’s less than perfect. After pressing, fresh-cracked egg whites used to be used to clarify the juice, and the yolks were used to make special cookies sold all over the city (they still are). Now the use of fresh eggs has been outlawed, so powdered whites are used instead. Next, the juices are aged in stainless steel tanks to complete the fermenting process before being sealed into the oak barrels for two years and then bottled. Each barrel gets candled to gauge the sediment on the bottom. Wines at Giscours are all estate bottled. Sulfites are introduced
only
because they are used to clean the barrels of bacteria between uses.

The barrels are used for only four years. After that, they are sold to the port makers in Portugal who use them for forty years, and then the port makers sell them to the whiskey makers who use them for another forty years, and then they get sold to us as
antiques
to use as planters and the like.

Wines continue to age in the bottle. The 2010 wines were released in 2012; the 2011 wines in 2013, and so on. Fine wines should be allowed to age for
at least
another seven or eight years in the bottle before drinking. So those of us who may order a 2008 or 2009 wine thinking that it’s a fine thing to do are actually philistines …

Many of the steps we saw in the process were strikingly similar to our practices at Love and Quiches. There was the same careful sorting of the best grapes (or in our case, raw ingredients), the quality-assurance steps, the x-rays, and the tasting room with spittoons (just as we taste and spit in our test kitchen—if we didn’t, we would all weigh three hundred pounds by now!)

Many, actually most, wineries have been bought up by larger companies, and the family-owned winery is almost a thing of the past. Irwin and I felt a great affinity to this place, probably because it remains in private hands.

Later that night on the drive back to our ship, like a mirage in the middle of nowhere, we saw a well-lit McDonald’s, with lines around the corner. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Finally, we went to Lisbon, where, despite its reputation, there were excellent restaurants and pastry shops
everywhere
we turned and where we visited the Confeitaria Nacional, the oldest confectionary in Lisbon, founded in 1829 and still remaining in the founder’s family five generations later. There we feasted on the ubiquitous
pasteis de nata
, delicious custard tarts in flaky pastry, also served and displayed
everywhere
, in every shop. Well worth the calories.

And then we were done. Time to go home.

N
ow, for some fun! I have included here some of my favorite recipes, both from way back when my passion began and from now—some still calorie laden, but mostly not, which I use over and over again.

Just as I have changed since I founded Love and Quiches in my kitchen forty years ago, so has my cooking style. When I taught those classes so long ago almost everything was spilling over with butter, heavy cream, and starches; the more fat the better. I fried almost everything. Many of my techniques were overcomplicated, and I doubt that most of what I taught was incorporated into my students’ everyday cooking.

I kept my saved notes from those classes, but they mostly stay behind the closed cabinet that I put them in when we moved to the
city. I also rarely use my cookbooks any longer. I have learned not to be afraid of my own recipes; nowadays I mostly wing it. When I cook, I often vary my ingredients or method just a bit to keep it all interesting. Few recipes, I have found, are set in stone, and this helps keep the passion alive. For the most part, my new mantra is
easy does it!
So feel free to have fun with and put your own spin on the small selection of appetizers, main dishes, and desserts included below.

Long gone are the days when I would
never
buy anything
prepared, store bought
to serve at home. I had always made all my own stocks, my own mayonnaise, my own ice cream, and all my own sauces 100 percent from scratch. I even churned my own butter! I now realize that this may have been purely misplaced ego. I was trying to distinguish myself in some way, to prove something, but to whom I’m not quite sure.

Now I buy many of those things as components when I cook, although I vet them very carefully. Plenty of top-quality ingredients and prepared foods are available. I buy my fruit in one place, my meat in another; some cheeses in one place, others elsewhere; olive oil in one place, vinegars in another. That’s my drill.

At home I still use only butter, never margarine or other substitutes, but I use less of it. I use olive oil more often in most of my cooking, but not too much; I add wines and broths to enhance the flavor without adding calories. When I’m tempted to use cream, I often use light cream instead, or even milk, with excellent results. Dijon mustard adds a lot of flavor to myriad foods without adding calories. I use a bit less salt, but only a bit: remember, salt is salt and there is no substitute to enhance flavor, at least for me. I use only Vidalia or other sweet onions when cooking; I use more shallots than I do garlic; I use wild mushrooms—all kinds—with reckless abandon. One inviolate rule is that I still make all my own salad dressings,
never
store bought, but I am not averse to finishing off a lively cauldron of pomodoro or bolognese sauce with a jar of Classico brand tomato and basil sauce to gather it all together.

A nice thing to do is have some friends in for dinner and cook it yourself. I can still manage to put together a dinner party that knocks
it out of the ballpark, and I look forward to doing just that a few times each year for all my appreciative friends.

When I cook, I rarely use modern kitchen tools. They are much too much trouble to lug out of the closet (no room on the counter in my apartment) and to clean. Besides, they can’t do anything that a knife, whisk, hand grater, eggbeater, or mandolin slicer can’t do just as well. I donated my Cuisinart to the test kitchen at Love and Quiches twenty years ago and never replaced it. But I do have a blender, assorted mini-choppers, a spiral slicer, and other devices tucked away, just in case. Don’t forget: I have been at this for a very long time.