Delights and Prejudices

by James Beard

Chicken Sauté Sec

I am inclined to believe that the starring system put into effect quite honestly by Michelin, and adopted by every magazine in America and Europe, has contributed much to the ruination of good eating. And the excessive promoting of “must” restaurants throughout Europe, which magazines are prone to do, have turned many temples of gastronomic splendor into mere tourist traps.

There are great restaurants, good restaurants, and poor restaurants, but no restaurant is any better than the performance you can exact from it by knowing the chef, the maître d’hôtel or the owner.

Ouch

Mother thought clamming a great sport and would arise at five when there was a good low tide, don her best alpaca bathing suit and be off to the beach equipped with shovel and basket. She would meet a number of friends there, mostly men, for few women would bother to go clamming.

Thus we often went home with five dozen clams and six or eight crabs. If she was in the mood, Mother would clean a dozen or so clams and remove the digger muscles, which she brushed with flour and sautéed quickly in butter until they were heated through and not particularly golden. Most people cooked the whole clam. Mother was independent enough to think that only the diggers were fit to eat in this manner; the rest of the clam could be used for other dishes.

Scalloped Clams

Sautéed Crabmeat as Done at the Four Seasons

Salmon has always been a regal fish, and it is said that in the royal courts of the past, it was considered to be the greatest of delicacies. In fact, it was served at the coronation banquet of Henry V. And Pepys refers to a most satisfactory dinner he offered friends with a “jowl of Salmon” as the first course. It was known in the very early ages both in England and in France. Little wonder, then, that when Drake and his party found the Columbia River, they felt at home. Salted salmon was carried on many voyages of early explorers.

Gravad Lax

Truite au Bleu

Our Beach Fricassee of Chicken

The wild strawberries at Gearhart and up the beach took hours to gather, but they were so good that no one seemed to mind. They grew on long stems, similar to the European fraises des bois, and had a sugary, wild flavor that has lingered on my palate all these years and still fills me with nostalgia.

During our berry jaunts, we would also find yellowish-pink salmonberries. These were good enough to eat from the vine, my mother pronounced, but not good enough to carry home—too gross in flavor. The same thing went for the thimbleberry, a variety of wild raspberry.

Blue huckleberries were the most elusive of the wild berries. They usually grew in places difficult to reach, in the midst of a mountain wilderness.

Another berry much prized by us was the mountain blackberry, which has now been distributed through the country by a firm—in its infancy when I was young—called Dickinson’s. These wild brambles flourished in logged-over land and trailed through all sorts of terrain.

The Dutch had settled farther down the coast at Tillamook and created what has become an extraordinarily good cheese industry. In my day, cheesemaking in that area had only just begun. There was also an English family called Waterhouse, with several farms in the district, who made a true Cheddar that was not too aged and was very pleasant to eat.

A day of Seaside was more than enough for us and we were content to remain in our less populated locale for a week or so. One place in Seaside fascinated all of us children, however, and drew us back each time we were in town. This was West’s Dairy, where they made a five-cent milk shake, which resembled the granitas of Italy and offered twenty-eight different flavors.

These days on the Oregon shore were among the most memorable in my life. I can remember several occasions when an equinoctial storm came up suddenly, catching us still on the beach. I reveled in being out in the driving rain and high winds and in watching the surf go wild. It was equally exciting to scurry home, draw the shutters and sup on good food while listening to the wind and the beating rain. When the storm had passed, it left a calm of indescribable beauty.

Only last spring two friends and I bought smoked fish, bread, butter, cheese and beer and toted it to the beach, where we sat on the sand, munched, drank, talked, looked at the sea and enjoyed ourselves beyond belief. It is perfectly true that under these circumstances food tastes better. One relishes the fresh air and the escape from crowds, and delights in being simply oneself.

At the beach enormous carryalls, drawn by two or four horses, took us over the hills to Cannon Beach or Ecola, to the lake at West’s Farm, or up the beach to the wreck of the Peter Iredale.

It gave Mother great pleasure to set up grills on the beach with a driftwood fire and cook breakfast or supper for an assemblage that sometimes numbered twenty or twenty-five people, all of whom were assigned food to bring or duties to perform. I don’t know where she got the energy or how she persuaded the people to volunteer their help, but she did.

My Mother’s Favorite Baked Beans

When she did a steak over the coals, she used a thick, well-aged porterhouse and cooked it slowly. She felt it should have a good crust and be as rare as possible, but heated through and juicy. And, she thought, why hurry? There was nothing more important at the time than getting the steak cooked to perfection. People could wait for the steak, but she’d be damned if the steak would wait for people. She cooked a steak only when Mr. Hamblet or someone coming from Portland would bring one from her own butcher—the same was true of chops—because she held such a low opinion of most of the Seaside butchers that she would buy nothing from them but ground meat and meat that was to be boiled.

I knew that a picnic worth doing at all was worth doing with a hell of a lot of care, and this belief has remained with me ever since. Even when I have carside picnics in Europe and in America, there are good glasses along, good forks and knives, and if possible, china plates.

What is wrong with outdoor cooking? Well, the trouble with most male cooks is that they have too many drinks before they get down to the business of cooking. Then they lose their technique, and things get out of hand completely. Others are too scientific, carrying the cooking process to a degree of perfection that loses sight of the fun involved. A major difficulty with barbecuers, in general, is the tendency to oversauce. Catchup, Worcestershire, garlic powder and artificial smoke look fine on the supermarket shelves, but when they are combined indiscriminately they fail to improve any piece of meat being broiled over coals.

For Steak au Poivre—Press crushed or cracked peppercorns into the steak before grilling or pan-broiling. After it is done to the right stage, flame it with a little cognac. When the steak is pan-broiled, sometimes the pan is rinsed with cognac and heavy cream, which is poured over the steak.

It is a treat to mix coarsely grated Cheddar cheese, chopped garlic, chopped shallots, a dash of Worcestershire and some mustard and Maggi Seasoning with chopped beef before grilling it in butter.

It is my conviction that good raw material, properly seasoned and well cooked, needs no saucing.

Most people, I know, think that the longer the bits of lamb soak in a mixture of herbs, spices, wines, juices, etc., the better they taste. I disagree. I believe that the true essence of the meat is by far the most important flavor, and therefore I prefer to enhance it simply—with some olive oil, salt and pepper, and a bit of thyme, rosemary or oregano, depending upon my mood.

It is my opinion that charcoal has nothing to do with the success of cooking meat. The electric spit, such as the Town and Country, will give the same flavor. And I know that if I roast in an electric oven on a rack, with the joint lifted completely out of the pan, it will be as full of flavor as any spitted roast.

Some spits were worked by pulleys—many of these are still in use—some by clockwork, and some by a contraption in the chimney, operated with ascending and descending currents of air, which were, in effect, smoke-driven. Other spits used to be driven by dogs—bassets were preferred. And it is said that some of the animals would go for hours without a halt, they so loved the warmth of the room and the tidbits tossed to them.

Barbecue cooking was first introduced in America by the French who settled in Louisiana. The original idea was to feed a large outdoor gathering by roasting an animal, perhaps a whole sheep or goat or pig, in front of or over a fire on a homemade spit which pierced the animal from barbe à la queue

I have never really enjoyed large cocktail parties. I find them a bastard form of entertaining. One gets a drink, tries all the little dabs of food (I have coined a word for them: doots), spends some time chatting with one group, then says to himself mechanically, it’s time to move on and circulate. Often I get stage fright, walk through the room, bow or speak to those I know, and deposit my drink and leave fifteen minutes later. Smaller parties can be fun, but when social debts are paid in the form of an annual crush, the guests can only feel oppressed and bored. We are all doomed to attend and to give a certain number of cocktail parties each year, but whoever started the vogue has a lot to answer for!

I have always felt that food in the Caribbean is perhaps the worst in the world, and this experience did nothing to change my opinion.

In the spring at Gearhart, when the meadows were purple with violets and bluebells and the woods filled with new skunk cabbages and the first shoots of ferns, life was at its most tranquil. One could wander alone for hours on the beach, gaze at Tillamook Head and watch the surf.