Elizabeth David A Luscious Revolution

First published online March 5, 2009

In the early 1970s, shortly after we moved to Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire, I enrolled in an evening class at the University of Manchester.  Manchester is at latitude 53 degrees.  Churchill-polar-bear-capital-Canada’s a smidgen further north, at 58 degrees.  Although not nearly as cold as Canada a northern English winter then was often foggy, with a damp, bone-chilling cold and rainy.  It got dark by 4:30 p.m.

As soon as Jim got home on Wednesday evenings I’d leave our toddler Anna in his care, to share dinner then bedtime Beatrix Potter stories, while I dashed the short walk to Beechfield Lane to catch the bus into the sulphur-lit city.

                Manchester, photo: Dr. Nicholas Higham, professor of mathmatics, University of Manchester

The grimy, double-decker took about 50 minutes, winding through the outer suburban villages then Victorian semi-detached, row houses, past old factories, then finally to the University near the city center.  That winter nine of us studied Women in English History.

Typical of much of my education I remember far more about the after-class decamping to the ‘Straight Arms’ which was easily the saddest, most stern pub I’d ever been to, slightly redeemed by being near the bus stop.  Its style was typical of old industrial town centers of the North, a tile and brick building with ancient plumbing, high ceilings, dark stained wood and a profusion of signage decidedly flinty, “No Dancing,” “No Singing,” “No Swearing.” 
 

Nonetheless I learned much there, and had fun too.  Sometimes the instructor’s husband, a filmmaker, would join us.  I became friends with two fellow students, Ann and Pauline.  It was at Pauline’s that I first experienced the influence of Elizabeth David.  Pauline invited us to dinner at her family’s Victorian Heaton Park row-house on a frigid winter’s night which she lit with the bright flame of Provence.

She’d spent college summers in the south of France where she discovered a radically different cuisine from doer English fare.  She brought home from her travels a determination to ferret out olives and olive oils, eggplant and zucchini, lots of garlic plus an enchanting dining style all of which she brought to table that cold night in northern England.   The entree was roasted lamb with potatoes and a side dish of ratatouille Nicoise.  I can taste it still. Her inspiration: Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking (FPC). The next day I  bought a copy, now annotated extensively.

It was the hors d’oeuvres that most dazzled.  In little bowls, arranged on a cloth-covered tray, Pauline served black olives in oil; cottage cheese; celery heart and tomatoes stewed in olive oil, coriander and peppercorns; herring in tomato sauce ( the Danish Food Centre near St. Ann’s Square, Manchester offered a fine selection of fish and cheese at that time), and thinly sliced salami.

Elizabeth David, in FPC instructs on hors d’oeuvres, “Something raw, something salt, something dry or meaty, something gentle and smooth and possibly something in the way of fish.”  Yes, that’s the way David’s recipes often read—open ended, kind of scary to the inexperienced but an approach, when seasoned by trial and error, aimed to liberate cooks from de rigueur lists, replaced by an inculcated understanding of how ingredients blend and work together.

“…the main object of an hors-d’-oeuvre is to provide something beautifully fresh looking which will at the same time arouse your appetite and put you in good spirits,” David instructs in FPC.  How many sad meals lack these most essential ingredients?  She goes on to describe, as she does in all of her books, not just recipes but the places she found these foods, who prepared them, reviews of exotic cookery books dating back generations, and places she visits such as a hotel in northern France, the Hotel de la Poste at Duclair.  “There were thinly sliced cucumbers, little mushrooms in a red-gold sauce, tomatoes, cauliflower vinaigrette, carrots grated almost to a puree (delicious this one), herring filllets.”  She also makes note of skillful use of color and presentation.

David’s early cookery books translated the joy of Mediterranean cuisine to a battered, war-weary population.  England had food rationing for 12 years, ending in 1953. David lamented the difficulties in obtaining fresh basil and pine nuts but persevered.  Terrance Conran, noted English designer and restauranteur, said, in his introduction to the Folio Society’s exquisite 2006 printing of Italian Food, part of their David series, “Elizabeth David changed the U.K.                                                

"In the early fifties, when much of the British Isles was grey, broken and rationed, her books brought the hope of a different sort of sunny, colourful, well-fed life into our gloomy world.”  Conran was so awed by David that when he opened his London restaurant, Bibendum, after establishing his Habitat home emporiums, he insisted on installing an elevator, at considerable expense, hoping to attract the now infirmed David who lived nearby.  She became a frequent diner, often with Francis Bacon whom she met there                        

                        

Born Elizabeth Gwynne, circa 1913, to a wealthy member of Parliament, she grew up in an idyllic 17th century Sussex manor house, Wootton Manor.  In the 1930s she went to Paris to study at the Sorbonne.  It was there she began her lifelong mission to expand cooking in the British Isles.  She was caught on the Continent during World War II, fleeing German occupation, first to Corsica, then Greece and Crete when helped by the British to escape to Alexandria then Cairo. 

“So it was only later, after coming home to England, (after World War II) that I realized in what way the family had fulfilled their task of instilling French culture into at least one of their charges.  Forgotten were the Sorbonne professors and the yards of Racine learned by heart, the ground plans of cathedrals I had never seen, and the saga of Napoleon’s last days at St. Helena.  What had stuck was the taste for a kind of food quite ideally unlike anything I had known before,” David recounts in FPC.

David was a scholar.  the bibliography of FPC is 15 pages, her prose renowned for its accuracy and wit.  “The origin of Parmesan cheese must be very remote.  “The Parmesans (natives of Parma, Italy) claim that it has been made in the district for 2000 years.  In any case it was already well-known in the 14th century...(a storyteller recounts) in the province of Parma, ‘there’s a mountain consisting entirely of grated Parmesan cheese...on which live people with nothing to do but make maccheroni and ravioli, and cook it in capon broth,’” David recounts in Italian Cooking.

“Provence is a country to which I am always returning...as soon as I can get on to a train.  Here in London it is an effort of will to believe in the existence of such a place at all.  But now and again the vision of golden tiles on a round southern roof, or of some warm, stony, herb-scented hillside will rise out of my kitchen pots with the smell of a piece of orange peel scenting a beef stew,”  David waxes euphoric in her introduction to Italian Cooking.

“It is indeed certain...that the sprout from Brussels, the drabness and dreariness and stuffy smells evoked by its very name, has nothing at all to do with southern cooking,” David writes.  Ever the culinary sleuth, David adds rich details from battered, out-of-print cookery books.  Her writing style creates not only a desire to replicate certain dishes but insight into their history.

“Provence is not without its bleak and savage side.  The inhabitants wage perpetual warfare against the ravages of mistral; it takes a strong temperament to stand up to this ruthless wind which sweeps Provence for the greater part of the year...It does not do to regard Provence simply as Keat’s tranquil land of song and mirth.  The melancholy and savagery are part of its spell.”  This could be said, too, of North Dakota.

Although David’s Mediterranean series was written primarily for an English audience her books translate well anywhere.  She addresses measurements, weights, oven temperatures, etc. in each of her books for good reason.  I remember how shocked I was when my Betty Crocker cake recipe was a dud in England.  English flour is milled differently plus the Imperial cup is larger than the American one.  Also the electricity is a stronger current and the public gas is of a different vintage too.  Weighing food anywhere in the world is more consistent that using cups as a measure.

   

Photos circa 1970s:                              

Jim stirring a pot of Elizabeth David’s currant jelly             Anna washing our garden tomatoes for ratatouille

In North Dakota we grew red and black currants , gooseberries (for a couple of years anyway, until the dastardly fungus got them) and strawberries.  We also grew eggplant, zucchini, peas, beans, tomatoes, potatoes, corn, peppers, onions, shallots, herbs, etc. etc.   It was a marvelous place to have a Mediterranean cookbook.  The all round BEST Elizabeth David recipe we ever made in North Dakota was on a late sunny morning in June right after harvesting our first crop of sweet green peas. 
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Potage Creme de Petits Pois Cream of Green Pea Soup

                                      -Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking

This is one of the nicest, freshest and simplest of summer soups.   Those who claim not to be able to taste the difference between frozen and fresh peas will perhaps find it instructive to try this dish.  Not that a very excellent soup cannot be made with frozen peas, but when fresh peas are at the height of their season, full grown but still young and sweet, the difference in intensity of flavour and of scent is very marked indeed.

 
Quantities are 1 3/4 pounds of peas
the heart of a cabbage lettuce--I used Boston lettuce  or you could use iceberg
1/4 pound (yes, 1/4 pound) of butter -next time will try soy based margarine
1 3/4 pints of water
salt and sugar

Melt the butter in your soup saucepan; put in the lettuce heart washed and cut up into fine strips with a silver knife; add the shelled peas, salt, and a lump or two of sugar.  Cover the pan; cook gently for 10 minutes until the peas are thoroughly soaked in the butter.  Add the water; cook at a moderate pace until the peas are quite tender.  Sieve them, or puree them in the electric liquidizer.  Return to the pan and heat up.  a little extra seasoning may be necessary but nothing else at all.   Enough for four ample servings.

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In 1963, at age 49, David had a cerebral hemorrhage.  She went on to receive many awards for her culinary skills but the honor that she most treasured was being made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1982, which recognized her skills as a writer.  In 1986 she was awarded a CBE (Commander of the British Empire, a   Knighthood).   She died in 1992, at 78.

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As I write this feature our home is filled with the magical scent of Terry B’s oven braised beef stew ( Blue Kitchen ) Feb. 6, 2008.

 http://www.blue-kitchen.com/2008/02/06/slow-good-oven-braised-beef-stew/ 

The beef is marinating in wine, bay leaves with onions and is bubbling away in my new Staub braisier. What an oddly satisfying state of affairs.  The French connection is  alive and well.  Elizabeth David helped promote the dissemination of fine cooking.  I salute her.  (and Terry,  Pauline, my Mom, Julia Child and aspiring cooks everywhere!).