14 Jul 2009 07:55 am
‘What is the first food you remember, remember seeing it if not eating it? Well, the first food I remember from my early childhood in San Francisco in the early ‘eighties was breakfast food: cracked wheat with sugar and cream, corn meal with molasses and farina with honey. But after that the first food that I saw and clearly remember was souffle fritters which of course were not included in a diet prescribed for a child. Nora, my mother’s cook, fortunately stayed on long enough for me to taste her fritters… Nora’s ice cream is still remembered. It was frozen in a then lately invented “automatic” freezer, there was no cranking to be done. my mother revelled in each year’s invention. How she would have enjoyed the present gadget of the week… It surprises me, recalling these two of Nora’s delights, to find that my collecting of treasures commenced so very, very long ago and that many of them, consequently, are no longer treasures. One must have been more innocent and more inexperienced than one likes to think of one’s self as having been..’
‘Scheherezade’s Melon
Cut a piece from the stem end of a melon. Scoop out in as large pieces as convenient as much of the pulp as is possible without piercing the melon. Empty all the juice, dice the pulp in equal quantities (this will depend upon the size of the melon) as well as pineapple and peaches. Add bananas in thin slices, and whole strawberries and raspberries. Sugar to taste. When the sugar mixed with the fruit has dissolved put the fruit and their juice in teh melon. Cover with four parts very dry champagne and one part each of Kirsch, Maraschino, Creme de Menthe and Roselio. Put in the refrigerator overnight.’
From The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook. Mallarme’s recipe for delicious coconut marmalade sounds very tempting, too.