France Premieres New Culinary Film LES SAVEURS DU PALASIS

Opening in European film festivals (and soon we hope in the U.S.) is a stunning new food film, Les Saveurs du Palasis, based on Daniele Delpeuch’s experiences as Francois Mitterrand’s personal palace chef. 

We should say loosely based, for as always, there are additions and subtracts from the actual story. But be that as it may, you will surely be intrigued by the female lead.  

We first meet Hortense Laborie, (the character based on Ms. Depeche’s amazing life) in Antarctica. Yes, Antarctica, not Paris, where she is cooking for a group of appreciative but very isolated scientists. At first glance it does not seem she could possibly have walked the glided corridors of French presidential power.

But she did and often (at least initially) without support. She was a woman unwelcomed in a professional world of men. She did not wear a towering toque nor a chef's white jacket. Yet she worked, created and finally won the respect of her many male colleagues.

It is a marvelous film - a visual feast for the eyes and with good reason. The film’s culinary presentations were created by top professionals - Chef Gérard Besson (formerly at Le Coq Héron), Chef Guy Leguay (previously at The Ritz) and Culinary Stylist/Chef Elisabeth Scotto (of Elle Magazine).

From the beginning the film’s director Christian Vincent wanted the French actress Catherine Frot to play the role of Hortense, knowing she was perfect for the role.

She was exactly the same age as the character, with a genuine, practical side that suited the role perfectly. Her persona is natural, believable in either a country market or a palace kitchen. 

Today Daniele Delpeuch lives and teaches in her beloved Périgord region, where she promotes traditional cuisine and indigenous ingredients including truffles, truffles, truffles – oh, how we love them.

If you are in France, consider studying with her – you will marvel at the dishes you create and the conversations you will have.

But whether or not, your feet land on French soil, be sure to see this film when it comes to your neighborhood. It truly captures the spirit, the flame and flavor that is the craft and magic of French cuisine.  

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012  

Old Is New in Food Ads and US Politics

It seems the world is a swirl with crisis and violent protest when peace would serve us all so much better.

Yet hate and prejudice are sadly nothing new. Great writers from Twain to Tolstoy have documented the lost such actions create.

Now even major food producers are asking consumers, through humor, to remember and consider the cost of hate and blind bias. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne (and Kraft Foods), however, don’t have the final word on this subject. Americans have heard during the current election season a constant (but weakly documented) attack on the many benefits of mature government.

Maybe the best response to such a shortsighted barrage, a la The Scarlet Letter Mayonnaise Ad, is this memorable scene from Monty Python’s The Life of Brian:

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012 

Anna Karenina and Vodka Equal Great Chemistry

We can thank the Russians for great literature, and of course, for vodka. And this fall we will get both.

Kicking off the winter season is a new movie that creatively re-envisions Leo Tolstoy's great heroine, Anna Karenina.

Directed by Joe Wright and starring the breathtakingly beautiful actress Keira Knightley, it is staged on a stylized inclusive theater set, designed to reflect the closed world of values that sought to control the last days of czarist Russia.

The film’s elegant style is sure to affect culinary trends this fall including vodka cocktails, caviar service and all things grandly Russian. 

Yet few in the culinary world would connect the creation of science’s esteemed Periodic Table of Elements (something every chef interested in molecular experimentation should have) with the creation of Russian vodka.

Yet Dmitri Mendeleev, who labored long and hard to develop the Table, also used his amazing skills to define the precise formula to produce the perfectly balanced vodka – 40% alcohol by volume.

For that we should thank him most hardily. Thank you, thank you!

And yet, there is not a single vodka cocktail that honors him (or Tolstoy) by name.

Perhaps that omission will be correct this winter as the message of the new Anna Karenina movie reminds us all that the vital right to decide our own life’s course is a freedom to be treasured - and protected. 

To that we at Your Culinary World gladly raise our glasses!  We hope you do as well.

Post Note, November 30, 2012: In a creative marketing move that must be a reflection of current trends, the new Anna Karenina movie props are for sale on the Internet, including tables, chairs and mother-of-pearl cutlery. Amazing times these! Beautiful bargains! 

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012 

Peanut Butter Goes High Fashion Thanks to Diana Vreeland

Peanut butter is generally thought of as ideal for children’s school sandwiches or as a key ingredient in after school snack cookies.

Actually peanut butter was first savored in 1890 when a St Louis doctor thought a high protein peanut paste would be a nutritious treat for his elderly patients with poor teeth.

By the turn of the century Dr. George Washington Carver had identified over 300 uses for the humble peanut, including a much improved peanut butter spread.

In 1908 the Krema Products Company in Columbus, Ohio produced the first commercial peanut butter, followed in 1928 by Swift & Company (a company that later became Peter Pan).

But least you think all peanut butter is restricted to primary school lunches or the home cookie jar, a new documentary, entitled The Eye Has to Travel, has revealed that Vogue’s legendary editor Diana Vreeland’s favorite daily lunch in her elegant red New York office was, yes, you guessed it – a peanut butter sandwich!

But a peanut butter sandwich with flair. The peanut butter had to have enough flavor to prompt Vreeland to declare that peanut butter was the best invention since Christianity.

Her sandwich bread had to be equally unique - cut from a freshly baked loaf of whole wheat bread. Vreeland disliked bland commercial white bread so much she was known to remark that it would make better glue than bread.

Last but not least, she regularly finished off her peanut butter sandwich with a tablespoon of her favorite marmalade jam, made from Spanish oranges.  

Being a powerful arbiter of fashion, her lunch time beverage of choice was a long shot of memorable scotch. Wow! – definitely not for Johnny or Mary at school, but so elegantly Vreeland: a healthy, classy peanut butter sandwich with Highland scotch! (No wonder she defined style as the editor of Vogue for over 30 years and later as the esteemed director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute!)

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012

Le Cordon Bleu Honors Julia Child's 100th Birthday with the Perfect Recipe

Happy Birthday Julia! And who better than Le Cordon Bleu in Paris to celebrate this remarkable woman's 100th birthday for it was at this, France's most esteemed culinary school, that Julia first formally studied cooking.

However, it has surprised some that Le Cordon Bleu chose to honor Madame Child by posting on their website a recipe for such a humble dish as Oeufs à la Bourguignonne’ or eggs poached in red wine. (See a link to their recipe, also known as Oeufs en Meurette, below).

Yet have no fear - their choice is so much what Julia was truly about – simple fresh ingredients, great technique and a touch of historic French flair.

Just consider that Oeufs à la Bourguignonne’ was originally from beautiful Burgundy (the source for the red wine used in the recipe) and associated there with a Cadet Rousselle, who built in the late 1700's an open-air walkway above his house that offered shelter to birds (remember that eggs are also a key ingredient in the dish).

His strange walkway was soon immortalized in a local song that quickly became a favorite of Napoleon’s far marching soldiers.

It remained so popular that after a mere 50 years Tchaikovsky in czarist Russia chose to use it as the theme for the towering Mother Ginger and her many children in his beloved holiday ballet, The Nutcracker.

If you consider that Julia, like a modern Mother Ginger, led so many ingénue American home cooks out of the dark and into the larger world of fabulous French flavors, you can see how perfect (and oh so perceptively French) Le Cordon Bleu's honorary choice of cuisine was.

And what better work of musical talent could there be to represent Julia Child's love of sweets than The Nutcracker ballet with its many food references, all dancing by in wonder and delight.

(Thank you, Meryl Streep, for both of these two amazing portrayal of Julia Child in the award winning movie, Julie and Julia).

Julia Child never had children of her own but she shared with millions the very best that she knew - how to enjoy life each and every day. What can we say for such a gift, but thank you! Julia, you are remembered and treasured! 

Oeufs à la Bourguignonne' Recipe 

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012