OLD SCHOOL

Robert Reynolds

 

My day started by reading that I’m ‘old school.’ (In the nicest way, but nonetheless an unexpected challenge to my vanity.) Before the day was done, I found myself sitting at the counter at Navarre with a friend. He’s probably old school as well since w both go way back, both trained in France, both had restaurants in San Francisco. We talked over a glass of rose from Tavel, from the south of France, across the river from Chateauneuf du Pape. We appreciated the wine more than the subject of molecular gastronomy.

 

Navarre was humming nicely. The kitchen staff offered a pleasant backdrop, acting out an organized, economy of movement, focused on the tasks of chopping, cleaning, wiping, plating, serving. The present menu is focused on the cooking of the alpine region of France on the border with Italy, known as the Savoie. While examing the menu my friend said he wanted the chicken liver mousse. I wanted the salad of tomatoes and peaches. He wondered if we should order the roulade. “I’m up for it,” I answered. He turned to John Taboada, who owns Navarre, and asked if the staff made the roulade the way he suggested. John gave him a qualified answer, explaining that they’d taken the flavorings from a dish of the region that John researched in an old Madleine Kamman book. 

John came to study with me in France, and was an exceptional student of cooking. I remember the day at the market hall when I decided to give him the budget for the day’s food purchases. I told him there were only two conditions. “You have to buy what is best, and you need to explain to me how you know that. Second, no matter what you buy, the garlic from the old lady who pulled it out of the ground today and brought it to the market, or the foie gras from the woman who raised birds; I want you to ask what they would do with the ingredient today.” I still have a photograph of him navigating a village market in France, completely engaging vendors who spoke no English, and he spoke no French.

 

At another stage of his training, I moved on to an exploration of regional cooking. I chose a menu from the Savoie and told John to go to town to get wine from my friend’s shop. “Tell Patrice exactly what you are preparing.  Ask him what he recommends.” I knew that Patrice would love discovering what the Americans were up to, and that he’d give John exactly a wine that I’d want. John came back with a wine from Apremont.

 

That night as the students gathered around the table to enjoy the foods they had prepared, we opened the Apremont. It’s taste made their jaws drop. “What is this?” John asked. “It’s like wine made from water cascading down the mountains, captured, and made into wine,” I answered. “Can we go here?” he asked, pointing at the bottle in his hand. I rotated the bottle to the reverse side. Because it was France, the name, address, and phone number of the wine maker was noted on the label. I picked up the phone, and dialed.

 

When the person at the other end picked up, I explained to him who we were, what we were doing in France, and that at the moment we were drinking one of his wines. “We want to know if we can come and visit you?“ I asked. “Certainly,” he told me. The next day, we packed up, drove across France, visiting the regions of the Beaujolais and Lyon, before climbing the roads to the valley high in the mountains where Apremont is produced. I will always remember the road entering the valley. There are mountain ranges on both sides, and the ribbon of road divides as it extends through the  carpet of vinees. We entered to meet the man we’d spoken with on the phone.

 

Fifteen years later Apremont is almost a fixture on Navarre’s wine list, and the region still inspires John. The Roulade on Navarre’s menu made me think of a dish Josephine Araldo used to prepare. His version arrived with three slices served with the broth in which the meat cooked, and accompanied by a scattering of onion and carrots that gave flavor to the broth.

 

The meat was melting tender, and beautifully flavored with bay, thyme, nutmeg, the classic, old-fashioned blend of spices Madeleine Kamman suggested in her recipe. The way those flavors  transported the lamb and made the dish delicious, old school, and a rarety.  “Oh,” my friend added, “and the chicken liver mousse was very much like …. an airy cloud.”

Josephine Araldo was trained by Henri Paul Pellaprat, France’s kitchen god. Her generation passed on the traditions of good food to the generation of Julia Child and Madeleine Kamman. Josephine and Madeleine passed that tradition to me. I passed it to John.  He gives it to his staff. There’s something satisfying in discovering how it continues. Molecular gastronomy will disappear, but the thinking that produced Navarre’s roulade sustains itself by addressing a different truth. It does so honorably.