I visited Brody Bennett, a friend from Mangawhai currently cooking at Antoine Westermann's specialty vegetable restaurant Mon Viel Ami, located in the heart of Paris on Ile St-Louis, one of the two natural islands in the Seine. I was only in Paris for two days proper, managing two lunches there & an evening for dinner...it wasn't enough.
With all the great dining experiences, there's an almost irresistable urge to retell history in a narrative of bite sized highlights...I'll resist (friends have taken me aside before now to explain how not everyone appreciates the detail). What a pleasure though, when you love food, to dine in the restaurant where friends work. Meeting the brigade, seeing the kitchen..you know you're in good hands, & it's cool. Mon Viel Ami's vegetable cookery was another aspect of this experience that appealed very much, most significantly because this was the section I grew up in. My role as Entremetier at Petit Lyon in Wellington, the restaurant which changed life as I knew it, remains as the benchmark for every restaurant experience I have had since then. This was familiar territory.
Feeling pretty good, I sat in Mon Viel Ami about to order, visualising a vegetarian feast. I liked the way this menu was organised &, continuing to browse for the sheer pleasure of it, I came to 'Dish of the Day'. I had no idea what day it was at that moment & knowing wouldn't have made a scrap of difference, until I looked down the days & saw Thursday's dish. Suddenly, what day it was did matter; in an instant it had become a matter of great importance that today be Thursday. What I was looking at I'd not seen for the longest time: for on Thursday's at Mon Viel Ami the dish of the day was that same dish my mother would make for me on special occasions when I was a boy, a speciality, one of her best, & the dish I remember most fondly of all others for that reason. Time to order. I asked...it was Thursday.
We all have that dish, don't we? Elsewhere on this blog I've had other friends, chefs, tell the same story, that childhood dish which cuts through time, which brings back memories. Blanquette de veau is mine. The blanquette they served that day for lunch at Mon Viel Ami was outstanding. A basket of crusty bread on the side, to mop up the sauce, & a glass of vin blanc. Simple & understated, it was served in a plain casserole, just like the one my ma used when she would make blanquette de veau, now passed down in turn to me. This recipe is, in my mind, the quintessence of French cooking. Vegetables from the garden, a shoulder of veal, butter cream & eggs, slow cooked. So simple, yet so so delicious, & a joy to cook.
The recipe above is the same one my mother started with. I found this copy of the cookbook it comes from, by Margaret Fulton & published in 1968, which my mother used. The original copy now fallen to pieces, I have it tucked away, the pages are yellowed with age, stained from use, all us kids have thumbed through it, cooking any number of recipes under my mother's guidance. But this one I use still from time to time when nostalgia gets the better of me. The recipes are tried & tested, but like all recipes they are best used as a guide. Also, within this recipe, like all good recipes, there are lessons to be learned, the cook's magic, to reward those who persevere, as I hope you do.
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