The meal at QI last night (previous posting) was excellent. The menu was composed by Paul as a tribute to the part that food played in Lytton Strachey's life: he enjoyed his food and had a prodigious appetite.
Frisée, bacon and poached egg salad
Temple Farm 'Label Anglais' chicken, risotto of almond, onion, red pepper
***** Château Beranger, Picpoul de Pinet, Languedoc 2003
Château Guilhem, Côtes de la Malapère 2000
Richard Olney (1927–1999) is my culinary hero. Paul knew him and speaks warmly of their friendship. We talked last night about Olney's originality as a cook. (Originality in cooking is surely very rare; indeed, Paul recalls Jane Grigson saying no cook is original.) That he was also a perfectionist is well known; his memoirs, Reflexions, would alone establish that — if you haven't the time or wish to study the 27 volumes of the out of print Time-Life Good Cook series. The stories I've heard or read of Olney keeping the Time-Life camera crew working late into the night as he sought to capture the intricacies of each step of a recipe … (The most photographed hands in the world? Probably!) I know of no better manual for learning to cook than this series and it is far, far cheaper (second-hand) than going off on any course.
Olney famously remarked, 'I don't like recipes. They keep cooks from using their intuition, and intuition is precisely what so much of cooking is about.' He was an artist and a cook (reflecting on his experience of both: 'The painter-cook analogy does not seem too far flung to me') and doesn't fall into that category of false witnesses that Anil Dash and Maciej Ceglowski have written about recently.
You, the cook, must also be the artist, bringing understanding to mechanical formulas … for such is creativity, be it in the kitchen or in the studio: the application of personal expression to an intimate understanding of the rules. … Rules in cooking are not iron-cast (and, as in any medium of expression, they are often bent or broken by practitioners of talent — but to break rules, one must have rules). They are merely the expression of a well of experience formed and enriched over the centuries, re-examined, modified, or altered in terms of changing needs, habits and tastes. They are welded out of knowledge … One's own set of rules will form itself and become increasingly elaborate as one comes to understand the logic behind each detail, each step, to recognise the repetitions or variations of basic steps from one recipe to another; and the more elaborate the set of rules — that is to say, the better one understands and is able to define an intricate framework of limitations — the greater is the freedom lent one's creative imagination. Only a cookbook is needed to prepare a boeuf Bourguignon but, without rules, improvisation is impossible — and that is what cooking is all about. Simple French Food
The Independent concluded its obituary of Olney:
Richard Olney's writings may come to share the position bestowed upon A. Escoffier's 1903 Guide Culinaire as the international authoritative culinary text of the 20th century. A pair well-matched. Escoffier preached "Faites simple" and devoted his career to eradicating the excessive culinary follies invented by his predecessors. He was rigid in his belief that the fundamentals and principles of cooking should be adhered to in order to maintain quality and excellence. However, while Escoffier accepted modifications and adaptions, one senses a fear to deviate. Olney, similar in his lifelong campaign for simplicity and belief in solid foundations, departed from Escoffier's teachings in wholeheartedly encouraging the use of imagination and improvisation in the kitchen once the rules were mastered - a culinary evolution that only an artist could instigate.
