Hamp­ton Court by proxy, and a lit­tle research

Yes, it’s use­ful to have a ten-year-old who does excit­ing things dur­ing the day while her moth­er gro­cery shops and research­es her cook­book. Avery spent the day with her class­mates yes­ter­day get­ting to, explor­ing, and get­ting back from Hamp­ton Court Palace. This is no easy feat as it turns out, involv­ing a coach jour­ney and a fer­ry jour­ney, with 23 lit­tle girls. I always think at these times that Miss Leslie needs to make a lot more mon­ey than she prob­a­bly does. How­ev­er, the sto­ries that came back made it sound like a def­i­nite des­ti­na­tion. The ghost of Cather­ine Howard, the unfaith­ful and ulti­mate­ly head­less fifth wife of Hen­ry VIII! “Real­ly, Mum­my, the ghost walks the Great Hall wail­ing and moan­ing!” And, unac­count­ably, a name­less pup­py ghost who brush­es against the legs of vis­i­tors. And a total­ly mys­te­ri­ous ghost caught on CCTV! I’m not mak­ing this up.

And on the way to the Palace, they stopped at the Nation­al Archives, the repos­i­to­ry of every­thing from the Domes­day Book to fam­i­ly his­to­ries of the British peo­ple. Most impor­tant­ly, for the gulls, was an actu­al auto­graph of Hen­ry VIII him­self, brought out espe­cial­ly by a docent and laid rev­er­en­tial­ly before the chil­dren. “I could have touched it! But I did­n’t,” Avery crowed, and then said, “You know, Hen­ry VIII was­n’t real­ly so much a bad per­son as he was… full of himself.”

I myself had a much less event­ful day, but inter­est­ing nonethe­less. I real­ly am get­ting deep into my project to re-pub­lish some of the recipes of the great Gladys Taber. Yes­ter­day I delved into a whole area of schol­ar­ship that I did not know exist­ed: the his­to­ry of cook­books. Who knew there were culi­nary schol­ars? Well, I think I knew that there were peo­ple who stud­ied the his­to­ry of food, and eat­ing, but now there is what I can only think of as a meta-field, of peo­ple actu­al­ly study­ing the devel­op­ment of the cook­book indus­try. And as every devo­tee of a meta-field knows, there will be… con­fer­ences. I have attend­ed so many meta-field con­fer­ences in my for­mer life as a fem­i­nist art his­to­ri­an that I feel, read­ing the list of con­fer­ence top­ics, as if I have heard the papers already. I myself used to give papers at the meet­ings of the devo­tees of Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Nine­teenth-Cen­tu­ry Stud­ies, with titles like “Uncov­er­ing the Gen­der Mes­sages in the Sculp­ture of Camille Claudel Between 1881–1886.” I’m actu­al­ly mak­ing that up, but I’m sure there was a paper close to it. So now I am mov­ing into the food­ie realm of such arcane spe­cial­i­sa­tion, and I real­ly look for­ward to it. There’s noth­ing like an expert, and it’s almost as much fun lis­ten­ing to one as being one oneself.

But I digress. My point is that there is a lot more to edit­ing a 60-year-old cook­book than just tak­ing out the MSG in the recipes and not­ing the decline of canned salmon as a major ingre­di­ent since 1947. I real­ly want to give a fla­vor, so to speak, of who was writ­ing about food in the 1940s, what their atti­tudes toward cook­ing and hos­pi­tal­i­ty and fam­i­ly life were, how dif­fer­ent­ly we in 2007 might (I’m not sure yet) feel about food and cook­ing. So I’m going to be read­ing all about it. Then there is a whole oth­er tiny meta-meta-indus­try that I am fas­ci­nat­ed by, and that is the chil­dren’s cook­book. I have no few­er than four, right here on my shelf, two old clas­sics of which there are prob­a­bly mod­ern edi­tions, and two entire­ly obscure vol­umes, The Gin­nie and Gene­va Cook­book, and The Beany Mal­one Cook­book. These are com­plete­ly intrigu­ing books of recipes cooked by the entire­ly fic­ti­tious hero­ines of two series of girls’ books from the 1950s! Can you imag­ine? That being said, Avery did make an awful­ly good lay­er cake from one of the recipes, so it turns out even fic­tion­al peo­ple can cook.

Well, school pick­up and rid­ing les­son beck­on, and today I real­ly am going to take my cam­era with me so I can get good pic­tures of the instruc­tors at the barn, for the even­tu­al iPho­to book I’m plan­ning as a present to the barn own­ers. Have you checked out iPho­to books? It’s so con­ve­nient to drag the pho­tos you’ve down­loaded right onto pro­grammed pages, click “buy now”, and a week or so lat­er you have a gift that will get a big­ger roar of approval than just about any­thing else you could make or give. Give it a try.

Oh, and in the spir­it of old-fash­ioned com­fort food, here’s a love­ly warm­ing din­ner for you and your child on a damp March night.

Sauteed Chick­en Breasts With Cal­va­dos and Cream
(serves two)

3 tbsps butter
2 bone­less skin­less chick­en breast fillets
1/3 cup Calvados
1/3 cup chick­en stock
2 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 shal­lot, minced
3 bay leaves
1 cup sour cream
salt and pepper
8 lit­tle but­ton mush­rooms, coarse­ly chopped

Melt but­ter in a heavy-bot­tomed skil­let, then saute the chick­en breasts on one side for 3 min­utes and turn, saute on the oth­er side for 3 min­utes. Remove and place on a plat­ter and set aside. Deglaze the skil­let with the Cal­va­dos and sim­mer until the alco­hol burns off, just a cou­ple of min­utes. Throw in the gar­lic, shal­lot and bay leaves and sim­mer until gar­lic is soft, then add sour cream, whisk until blend­ed, and sea­son to taste. Place the chick­en breasts in the sauce (pour­ing in any juice that accu­mu­lat­ed on the plat­ter) and scat­ter the mush­rooms around, stir­ring so they are coat­ed with sauce. Sim­mer until chick­en is done, about 8 min­utes. Serve on noo­dles, and nice lit­tle pile of steamed broc­coli for your con­science on the side.