A Celebration of Chefs and Others

Once Anthony Bourdain left The Food Network in a trail of acrimonious dust, he started a second television career on The Travel Channel. The show (”No Reservations”) was better (because, among other things, they allowed Anthony to be his acerbic, outrageous self) but he was gone from my life because the Travel Channel was not available from our cable company. We ordered episodes from Netflix, took them out of the library, and once, in a media coup that rivalled the day when my brother and I tuned in what we believed to be “porn”on the TV in the living room by fiddling rabbit ears and vertical hold, we found one episode of “No Reservations” on “On Demand,” and watched it with the fervor and intensity appropriate for a bootleg copy of Tommy and Pamela.

Then, one day, the Travel Channel appeared as I was flipping up towards the Premiums, bearing the portentous channel assignment “123.” (It’s portentous because I can remember it). We fell, that evening, under the spell of a young man named Adam Richman, and a show called “Man v. Food.” We fell hard. It is fabulous beyond all reckoning that we can now see “No Reservations” before the episodes are two years old, and there are a couple of other shows on the channel that we’ve enjoyed, but Richman is a revelation of how a network can combine really smart and really commercially appealing and create something that appeals to a large and diverse audience.

It is Sunday late morning, the North wind is howling outside and the rain has changed to half inch hail but the farmhouse walls are more than two feet thick and we are very cozy. We hear nothing, just the sounds of the wood fire crackling, a knife on the cutting board and two friends engaged in a lively conversation catching up on many things since our last visit. We are sitting at a 8 foot long chestnut kitchen table boning out the leg of a wild boar, removing sinew, fat glands and chipped bones from the bullet wound. Alain has told all his neighbors of our visit and one has shot a wild boar for the occasion and foraged for black truffles. It was long decided before the boar was cold that we would make a daube just like his mother made for him in his child hood home in Avignon and it will marinate today and simmer over a wood fire all afternoon tomorrow. Tonight we are having raclette with charcuterie for dinner that they brought home from their skiing vacation in the Alps. Not a bad way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon!

This year, in our house, we're cooking our version of Suzanne Goin's succotash.  Of course, Suzanne Goin doesn't call it succotash; in her book Sunday Suppers at Luques, she calls it sweet corn, green cabbage and bacon.  We call it succotash because we throw in some lima beans and way more butter:

Cut 6 thick slices of bacon into small pieces and cook in a casserole until crispy.   Remove and drain.   Melt 1 stick of butter in the remaining bacon grease and add 1 sliced onion and some salt and pepper.   Saute for a few minutes, then add half a small green cabbage, sliced, and cook until wilted.   Add 2 packages of cooked frozen lima beans and 2 packages of frozen corn.   Cook about 5 minutes, stirring, till the corn is done.   You can do this in advance.   Reheat gently and add the bacon bits.   (Of course you might be able to get fresh corn, in which case feel free to overreach.) 

- Recipe courtesy of Nora Ephron

More than thirty years ago I met John Takach, a retired small bluecollar bar and restaurant owner from Cleveland visiting his doctor son in Maine. He was rumored to be a gruff, remote  man so I was nervous. It was a beautiful warm August day when he arrived with his heavy vintage suitcase. After introducing myself and telling him how I had been looking forward to meeting him he looked at me and said, let's cook, I have much to teach you!

We were instant friends, as we picked cucumbers and told stories. That day is burned in my mind, we talked about the story of his life and love that he insisted on sharing with me. We chopped and sautéed and talked about life in the old country and coming to America. That night there was to be a gathering at his son’s house and we were expected to make a real Hungarian feast. He had brought along many brown wrapped packages filled with smoked hunks of fat, loops of freshly made sausages, good Hungarian paprika, and a special jug of Whiskey.