GASTRONOMY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20988, 26 September 1931, Page 1 (Supplement)

GASTRONOMY.

B Y KOT.VB.E.

THE SIMPLE LIFE.

Man is what he eats, declared a German philosopher who sought a material basis for everything in man. And certainly it is not only armies that march on their stomachs. The cook is nearer the foundations of human well-being and happiness than many who make a much bigger noise in the world. Absorption ir> the delights of the table is a morbid condition, neither creditable to the individual nor a hopeful sign for a nation. And it is particularly offensive in a time when a large section of the public is not sure where the next meal 13 coming from or when it will arrive. One of the most horrible characters in recant fiction is the old grandmother in Dr. Cronin 3 " Hatter's Castle." a hateful old creature who has outlived every human craving except the desire for food. She lives from meal to meal, remembering for an hour 01* so the delights of the last, and then ecstatically anticipating the next. This obscene concentration of every faculty on one supreme unworthy interest, this narrowing in senile eagerness of all the once rich endowment of a normal human nature into one miserable channel of indulgence and reminiscence and expectation. is as ugly a picture of human decay as the pen of man has ever conjured up. All the same it does us no harm to realise that there is an art or eating. There is a poetry of food just as there is a poetrv of words and a poetry ot rnutiun. There" are men and women who get as much thrill from a perfectly cooked meal, perfectly served, as others might :_et from an exquisite painting or a we turned sonnet. Your complete gastronomer is also an artist. Like the poet, he hn s his material in the ordinary things avai able for everybody. But they mean more for him and he can find a delight in them unintelligible to the ordinary man.

The sculptor has fair marbles as,a** teet. The painter has the miracle* of lyre: The poet takes the soiled words of the stree# And robes them with, impensnabie tire. Our Backwardness. For some reason, possibly our lack ot the opportunities through the absence ot a large wealthy class, but pcobablj the normal riealthv open-air life that is the privilege ot' all sections of our population, we are~a backward people gastronomically. We tend in some things to the primal simplicities. Still even in New Zealand we 'have some whose artistic enthusiasm is roused only by the memory or prospect of a dish that for them represents the Everest of culinary achievement. I know a man who has travelled much and far. He has seen everything that is to be seen. But he becomes eloquent only over the things he lias eaten. *jtaly is to him a certain restaurant in Florence where fish receives its apotheosis, Pam lives for hint as the only begetter ot a delectable sauce. It all means so much to him that I can onlv conclude there is something lacking in'mv own make-up and trainingHis raptures mean less than nothing to me; once they used to revolt me. Di.i<; perhaps the years are giving rue the kindness Rupert Brooke found one of the compensations of living, and f am piepared to acknowledge him a sincere expert in a realm to which I have lost or never had the right of access. Georse Borrow reckoned he had lived on the day when he had dined generously on boiled mutton and onion sauce. That was the goal of his gastronomic ambition. John Aldington Syniond-s, a big figure in the artistic and literary world a couple of generations ago, found no dinner more satisfactory than a well-cooked steak and a little goat's cheese served in a country inn in Hie Umbrian uplands. But he demanded also a flask of excellent Montepulciano. And he must- sit at the open window and the sun must be setting. As sauce to his meat and an added fragrance to his wine he must see the

" grppn dimpled valley stretching away to Orvieto. and -it its end a purple mountain mass, distinct ~r; d solitary, which may peradventure be Soracte — golden light streaming softly from behind us on this prospect, and gradual mellowing to violet and blue with stars above. Principles. Bur, there lies Symonds' condemnation as a complete gastronomer. \ our genuine artist of the table would scorn any intrusive interruption from nature. He wants no hill or valley or pcacefn'.ness Icf even in.3 light to district his attention | from the supreme matter in hand. How 1 can h<3 couccntrate on *.hs perfect inn bej fore him if fie luw to shnre his attention with a suiiiet? He must savour the beauty hta soal loveth. alone, with nil his faculties of appreciation tooassed. It is his hour of worship: he will share it with nothing and nobody in the exquisite moment of realisation. The Scot wis alleged to cultivate literature on a little oatmeal. There are alwavs voices that insist on a return to plain living and high thinking. Horace, in the ace of Rome's wildest luxury, when nightingales' tongues were only one among a hundred similar exotic tit bits to stimulate the epicure s appetite, loved nothing better than a night of winter on his Sabine farm, the winds howling without. a roaring fire of logs within, the simple produce of his own tie,)!.-,. >imp y dressed. upon his table. But we must admit that Horace had to nurse a digestion which made the public banquet anathema to him. Juvenal, most savage of_ all critics ot Roman luxurv, invites his friend I'ersicus to visit him and tells him what to expect From mv Tiburtine farm there will come a plump kid, tenderes.t ot the flock, innocent of grass. tha>. has ne\er ve. dared to rubble the twigs of the willow and has more milk in him than blood. some wild asparagus gathered by the bailiff's wife, some lordly eggs warm in their wisps of hay, together with the hens that laid them. There wul be grapes, too. kept half the year as fresh as when thev hung upon the vine; pears from Syria, and in the same baskets freshsmelling apples. The Philistine. A recent vivacious book ot _ travel through France spends a deal of space recording menus and trying to convey the thrill of exquisite meals. There :s nothing more incommunicable. \ou can persuade me that a poem is a thing ot beauty—you can produce the evidence that has convinced you; you can ia\e about music as you wiU-I ran hear it for myself and form my own opinion. But is there anything beyond mere annoyance created by such a lvricat outburst as this? f'oulet Choulot is the best chicken that I expect >.O e.it tnis side of heaven. They do it with a rich cream sauce, generously laced with port wine and garnished with slim little mushrooms. not much bigger than goodsized nails. 1 can feel an expression ot exalted gluttony creeping across my countenance at the mere mention of it; with its discreet accompaniment ot potatoes, like brown fairy balloons, I rn inclined to rate it as the best single dish that we had in France. I hate this dining by proxy. It leaves me cold to learn that there is a " miracie of a fish souffle that they call croustade de barbue. and that the brown on top is crisp, and the white in the centre is fluffy and the creamy yellow sauce tucked under it ail is meltingly smooth. And I cannot respond to the ecstatic declaration that the " whole thing blends together into as epicurean a symphony as can be found irt the entire civilised world." Frankly I don't believe it. But then I admit I am a Philistine. I might even go the length of an American couple held up to reprobation in this same book, who committed the unpardonable sin of ordering a return of potatoes.