It’s a regular disease of asparagus!
I finally got back to the farmer’s market off 75 this weekend and loaded up with some amazing vegetables for super cheap. For only $8 - a carton of mushrooms, 2 giant red peppers, a bunch of cilantro, a jalapeno pepper, 2 green chile peppers, a red chile pepper, a yellow onion, 4 sweet potatoes, 3 tomatoes, ginger root, a giant zucchini, a yellow squash, a lemon, 2 limes, a bunch of giant spring onions, and an eggplant. And the eggplant was the primary culprit in the price, accounting for a full quarter of the total!
At any rate, it’s all beans to what Françoise could put together. Loved the exchange between her and Tante Leonie about asparagus and TL’s fascination with her Arabian Nights plates. (These were the only plates which had pictures on them and my aunt used to amuse herself at every meal by reading the description on whichever might have been sent up to her. She would put on her spectacles and spell out: “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” “Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp,” and smile, and say “Very good indeed.”) Sure enough, North Carolina’s Replacements Ltd. (a bona fide institution of The Great North State, in case you didn’t know) has some available.
But all of this to say, here’s the description of what Françoise could put together for a meal:
For upon the permanent foundation of eggs, cutlets, potatoes, preserves, and biscuits, whose appearance on the table she no longer announced to us, Françoise would add—as the labour of fields and orchards, the harvest of the tides, the luck of the markets, the kindness of neighbours, and her own genius might provide; and so effectively that our bill of fare, like the quatrefoils that were carved on the porches of cathedrals in the thirteenth century, reflected to some extent the march of the seasons and the incidents of human life—a brill, because the fish-woman had guaranteed its freshness; a turkey, because she had seen a beauty in the market at Roussainville-le-Pin; cardoons with marrow, because she had never done them for us in that way before; a roast leg of mutton, because the fresh air made one hungry and there would be plenty of time for it to ‘settle down’ in the seven hours before dinner; spinach, by way of a change; apricots, because they were still hard to get; gooseberries, because in another fortnight there would be none left; raspberries, which M. Swann had brought specially; cherries, the first to come from the cherry-tree, which had yielded none for the last two years; a cream cheese, of which in those days I was extremely fond; an almond cake, because she had ordered one the evening before; a fancy loaf, because it was our turn to ‘offer’ the holy bread. And when all these had been eaten, a work composed expressly for ourselves, but dedicated more particularly to my father, who had a fondness for such things, a cream of chocolate, inspired in the mind, created by the hand of Françoise, would be laid before us, light and fleeting as an ‘occasional piece’ of music, into which she had poured the whole of her talent. Anyone who refused to partake of it, saying: “No, thank you, I have finished; I am not hungry,” would at once have been lowered to the level of the Philistines who, when an artist makes them a present of one of his works, examine its weight and material, whereas what is of value is the creator’s intention and his signature. To have left even the tiniest morsel in the dish would have shewn as much discourtesy as to rise and leave a concert hall while the ‘piece’ was still being played, and under the composer’s-very eyes.
- SW, Moncrieff, off Project Gutenberg
