Viands and vegetables from all over, for all seasonings
"Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else. "
—Dr. Johnson
Well said, Sam. Belly may have become a derogatory word in modern times, but Johnson properly viewed it as the locus and focus of gustatory enjoyment and sensual wellbeing. Still, Johnson was at a beggar's banquet compared with the modern diner's choice of delectations: ingredients, recipes and techniques from the kitchens of the world. Not least of these blessings, to a Johnsonian, is the cornucopia of culinary literature. A good cookbook is a perpetual feast, and this year's table is well laden.
The season's most savory surprise is English Provincial Cooking by Elisabeth Ayrton (Harper & Row; $16.95). Tradition au contraire ("In England there are sixty different religions, and only one sauce"), well-flavored sauces and gravies have graced English food since the Roman occupation. (Pastry, too, was introduced by Caesar's men.) English cuisine, even more than the French, is most notable for its regional diversities, which Ayrton explores and exalts with expertise and charm. She tells how to confect Wiltshire lardy cake and Yorkshire hot wine pudding, chickens as lizards and rum roast of lamb (for the sailor's return) —not to mention belly-warming Bedfordshire clangers, Oxfordshire sweet devil or the great Melton Mowbray pie, which long before the sandwich was the foxhunter's favorite lunch munch.
French cuisine—or at least its literature—seems to be divided like Gaul itself into three parts: classic, nouvelle and provincial. Many of the top chefs who miraculously find time to write these books are, hélas, unable to spread the flavors of their tables across the printed page. Louisette Bertholle provides a salivating exception. A collaborator with Julia Child and Simone Beck in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Bertholle has written a comprehensive, down-to-earth guide to French family cooking that is both witty and percipient. Her French Cuisine for All (Doubleday; $19.95), meticulously edited for the American cook, covers the Gallic spectrum from country soups and dandelion salad to such exotica as iced caviar-flavored consommé and roast loin of young wild boar (frozen joints of European boar are available at specialty stores in some U.S. cities). Bertholle's recipes for chocolate cakes are guaranteed to leave her pages stained with fudgy fingerprints.