Murder in the Kitchen (Penguin Great Food)
Alice B. Toklas
Language: English
Pages: 53
ISBN: 2:00170576
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In this memoir-turned-cookbook, Alice B. Toklas describes her life with partner Gertrude Stein and their famed Paris salon, which entertained the great avant-garde and literary figures of their day.
With dry wit and characteristic understatement Toklas ponders the ethics of killing a carp in her kitchen before stuffing it with chestnuts; decorating a fish to amuse Picasso at lunch; and travelling across France during the First World War in an old delivery truck, gathering local recipes along the way. She includes a friend's playful recipe for 'Haschiche Fudge', which promises 'brilliant storms of laughter and ecstatic reveries', much like her book.
Auntie would be an honoured war souvenir. Her odyssey was the subject of the following winter’s conversation. She is still there, but I have never had the courage to go to see her. At no matter what sacrifice it was unthinkable that we should be without a car. Fords were still scare in France, but Gertrude Stein inveigled a promise that she would have a two-seater open one within two weeks. As we were driving her to a beautiful new box fortunately secured in our neighbourhood for her I remarked
and were spending the summer there. One evening a beautiful woman sat at the little table next to us, her book turned towards us. After several days she suddenly asked, half turning her head, if we had Lavaret for dinner every night, to which we answered that we did. Several evenings later in the same fashion she asked why we had Lavaret every evening for dinner. Gertrude Stein told her that it was the most carefully prepared dish on the menu. Obviously, said the lady. One day we met her in the
want to learn, they preferred their own brutal ways. At lunch when she served the pigeons Jeanne discreetly said nothing. Discussing food which she enjoyed above everything had been discouraged at table. But her fine black eyes were eloquent. If the small-sized pigeons the island produced had not achieved jumbo size, squabs they unquestionably were, and larger and more succulent squabs than those we had eaten at the excellent restaurant at Palma. Later we went back to Paris and then there was
tasty, and effective dessert. As we came into the dining-room I had noticed a man wandering about whose appearance disturbed me, he looked suspiciously like a German. German officer prisoners did occasionally escape. When the maître d’hôtel received our compliments for the fine cooking, I asked him who the man was and he said he was the proprietor of the hotel and had just been released from Germany where he had been a civilian prisoner. He had been chef for a number of years to the Kaiser,
cheerful innocence was convincing, and his invitation was repeated and accepted. They were delightful. Madame de B. was training a local cook to cook as she believed cooking should be done. During wars, no game is allowed to be shot in France except boar that come down into the fields and do great damage. To prevent this a permit is given to landowners to shoot them on their property. A farmer had shot one and brought the saddle to Madame de B. So we had ROASTED SADDLE OF YOUNG BOAR Even