DISLIKE FOR RHUBARB

Waipa Post, Volume 42, Issue 3305, 4 June 1931, Page 2

DISLIKE FOR RHUBARB

FAMOUS PIANIST EMPHATIC. Some people adore x-hubarb.. i Some don’t. Among the donts cha Levitzki, the famous pianist, who can’t bear it. Interviewed man Australian paper recently, he said: “ The only food in the whole world I can’t eat is rhubarb.” . With this sweeping gastronomical utterance Mischa Levitzki removes himself immediately from the category of temperamental artists, fad lists, and the like. His powers of adaptability in food matters are as limitless as his gift for adjusting himself to the manners and customs of the country he happens to be in. He qan sit in a Japanese hous - hold and eat his beloved sukiakl (a dish of beef or chicken cooked before one on the table with oil, vegetables, and a special sauce) with the same relish with which he tackles the good old English roast beef in Simpsons restaurant, London the Mecca of beef-eaters. _ He can get just as excited about the famous French peasoup, Puree St. Germain, which he likens to a Brahms symphony, as he can about Italy s ravioli or Germany’s “ hot dogs and —this with an ecstatic roll of the eyes —Germany’s beer. ' He talks with amused horror of reistafel, the huge and enormously rich Dutch dish which he has made a brave show of enjoying on various occasions at the Hotel des Indes in Batavia, Java. This consists of about 30 different kinds of foods served at intervals by 16 boys on to a gigantic plate, about three times the depth of an ordinary soup bowl. FRENCH COOKING.

To the French people he gives the palm for cooking—in fact, the palm for most things. Paris is where he wants to live when he retires.

“ Cooking is an art, and at the same time a rite, in France,’ he says. “ They know just what and how to eat and drink. There is no nation which understands so well the' subtlety of food. Nowhere else do you get that quality of lightness. Why, even the potatoes are as light as air, and melt in one’s mouth like froth. What else can you expect from a country which erects statues to its cooks and its inventors of dishes ? ”

And then, with a contented sigh as if even France, after all, must take a back seat, Mischa Levitzki settled down to talk about his beloved Russia, which he left when he was nine years old, but for which he still cherishes a passionate adoration. RUSSIAN MENUS.

Four mlonths of the year (except when Mr E. J. Gravestock persuades him to go to Australia) he spends quietly with his Russian mother at their beautiful seaside cottage at Avon-on-the-Sea, in New Jersey; and there he is plied with Russian foodlarge midday meals in the approved national fashion, and light suppers of omelettes, fruit, and salads. “ A masterpiece ’ is the way he describes “ bursht,” the popular Russian best soup. This has as basis a rich stock into which is put finely-chopped beetroot that has been boiled separately in a little water. After the beet go potatoes, carrots, and onions, also finely minced. A teaspoon of sour cream when the soup—a rich red in colour —is in the plate is the individual touch which, in the eyes of a Russian, makes it specially delicious. Levitzki recommends the soup to any housewife who enjoys experimenting. He also recommends “beeroshee”—-

a pastry (Russians usually make this with yeast), between two rounds of which is put a mixture of finely minced pork, veal, onions, rice, hard-boiled egg and, of course, salt.

So delicious is the Straudel the pianist’s mother makes that, in his whimsical fashion, Levitzki tells of the way in which the neighbours children come flocking round as soon as the odour of the cake is wafted to their nostrils.