Even if you prefer J.R.R. Tolkien to F. Scott Fitzgerald, even if you would rather read Emma Bull than Ernest Hemingway, and even though you may favor Vallejo over Picasso, still, there is an appeal to the Lost Generation that no other group of writers, musicians, and artists can match. Oh, to have walked through 1920′s Paris with James Joyce, to have been invited to appear at one of Gertrude Stein’s famed salons, or to have attended a performance of the sensuous Josephine Baker — the Moderns who first shaped the artistic styles of the 20th century. In Found Meals of the Lost Generation author Suzanne Rodriguez-Hunter not only takes us back to the Paris of the Lost Generation, she allows us to dine with the literary and artistic personalities of that vibrant and mythic time.
Inspired during a year in Paris by a visit to Au Pont Marie, a restaurant included by Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises, Rodriguez-Hunter has written this delightful book as an “audible time-machine” a series of brief biographical sketches of the wild, hard-living American expatriates who populated Paris from the turn of the century until the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929. Each of the short chapters concludes with a “found meal” for the subjects of the chapter, a meal either taken directly from or inspired by their writings.
Vignettes of the lives of such notables as Sylvia Beach, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Josephine Baker, and Djuna Barnes are interspersed with delectable recipes that were or might have been enjoyed by the artists themselves. A reasonably competent cook will have no trouble re-creating the recipes in this book, though it might be a bit disconcerting at first due to the fact that all recipes are written as they were in the 1920′s. This means that there is no handy list of ingredients to compile at the beginning of the recipe. All recipes begin at the beginning, as it were, and continue through step by step to the finished dish. Ingredients appear as needed in the recipes.
The book begins with an account of the now legendary banquet given in 1908 by Pablo Picasso in honor of Henri Rousseau. Descriptions of the party include fifty bottles of wine and the subsequently drunken guests who fought, sang, danced, upset the pastry trays, and allowed an inebriated donkey to consume Alice Toklas’s flowered hat. Though the prepared dishes ordered from a local grocer did not arrive, Picasso’s girlfriend Fernande Olivier prepared a riz a la Valenciennes for the occasion. Rodriguez-Hunter includes a recipe for this dish which, though not the original recipe, was based on a recipe from The Art of Cuisine by painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The finished product, a sort of paella, is delicious.
I found this book both romantic and delectable. The writing itself is most enjoyable, lively and nowhere near as dry as biographical information often tends to be. The recipes are a lovely touch. Rodriguez-Hunter even includes very useful advice on how to choose good champagne and proper caviar. Curl up with this book and enjoy lobster with Josephine Baker, rabbit pate with John Dos Passos, roast chicken with Ernest Hemingway, and bouillabaisse with Zelda Fitzgerald. Tonight, I”ll be dining on Jugged Hare and Red Currant Jelly-Wine Sauce with Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Delightful — just like this book.
(Faber and Faber, 1994)
