The cassoulet dinner booked up in a flash, out of control, and I am very sorry to those who missed grabbing a table. Looking forward to cooking the way I love to cook, finding the flavors of my own memory, those that delight the soul. That's the nice part of cooking, the delight, isn't it? That, and serving it to those who love to eat. Well, strictly speaking, these are not the dishes my own childhood -- that's another story -- but they are dishes of memory for me, from those early days traveling and eating across Europe, trying to find what's good, from a perspective of naïveté, inexperience, and student poverty, but one full of enthusiasm and hope. These days, it's hard to find classic French food almost anywhere, as so many of the deeply evocative, evolved, satisfying dishes -- those that have been cooked by grandmothers exactly the same way for hundreds of years -- aren't made any more, and remain obscured in a thick, Proustian fog.
As cassoulet will soon be behind us, I'm thinking I may have to put on another such wintry dinner, maybe next time choucroute garnie...
