Julia Child wasn’t the only person to introduce America to French food.  Often when something is suddenly in vogue, it’s a combination of events that contributes to the cultural sea change.

René Verdon, June 29, 1924 – February 2, 2011

Chef René Verdon died two weeks ago at age 86.  I knew who he was.  I knew he owned a successful French restaurant in San Francisco called Le Trianon.  I may have met him in San Francisco when I worked at Stars restaurant in the early ’80s.  What I was reminded of while reading his obituary in the Los Angeles Times is that he was also White House chef during the Kennedy administration.  I was fascinated reading the details of his life, specifically how he ended up at the White House, and the influence he had on American cooking and eating.  There is so much more to that part of his story.

First Professional Chef in the White House

Verdon was the first professional chef to work in the White House.  First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy being a Francophile herself interviewed him in French.  As White House chef he was way ahead of his time: he cooked with the freshest ingredients he could find; he planted an herb garden on the White House grounds; he designed a new kitchen for the first family’s quarters.  He also broke tradition by serving as President Kennedy’s private chef.  During prior presidential administrations a housekeeper was in charge of feeding the first family.

Verdon was born in 1924 in a small French village, Pouzauges, in western France.  His parents owned a bakery and pastry shop.  Deciding he wanted to be a chef at age thirteen he apprenticed first at a hotel in Nantes followed by several apprenticeships in Paris and Deauville. He emigrated to the United States in 1958 and found work in New York restaurants the Essex House, and La Caravelle as well as the Carlyle Hotel.  La Caravelle head chef, Roger Fessaguet, recommended him for the job when the Kennedys were looking for a chef.

America’s Interest in French Cuisine

His arrival as White House chef ushered in a period of great interest in French food and cooking.  In an interview with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in 2002 Julia Child said she was “lucky” the Kennedys hired Verdon because soon “everyone was interested in French cuisine.”  Child’s French food bible “Mastering The Art of French Cooking – Volume 1″ was published in 1961 the same year that Verdon started cooking for the Kennedys.  It all makes sense.  Becoming the White House chef put Verdon on the international stage.  Mrs. Kennedy was considered the height of chic.  She didn’t hire any old chef, she hired a French chef.  It was the early ’60s.  Naturally the rest of the country, and the world, followed suit.  All of this brought at least as much if not more attention to French cuisine as Child and her book.  Verdon actually had a bigger more popular stage than Child’s.

French Food in the White House

While White House chef Verdon became known for such dishes as chicken in Champagne sauce, and “incomparable quenelles de brochet” (according to Time Magazine).  President Kennedy favored Verdon’s New England clam chowder.  His first official White House meal was an April 1961 presidential luncheon honoring then-British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.  Verdon served a menu of trout in Chablis and sauce Vincent, beef filet au jus and artichoke bottoms Beaucaire, and meringue filled with raspberries and chocolate.  Verdon’s favorite state dinner took place in July 1961 along the banks of the Potomac River honoring the President of Pakistan.   He served “simple yet elegant” food that included avocado, crab meat cocktails, and raspberries in Chantilly cream.

I asked Chef Jeremiah Tower to comment on his friend, Rene Verdon, “A very sympathetic man who devoted himself to what he knew best, the best of classical and country French cooking and standards of service.  A very fine chef.”  Tower and Verdon were San Francisco restaurateurs during the same period in the 1980s.  Verdon owned Le Trianon from 1972 to 1987.

Verdon wrote a total of five cookbooks including “The White House Chef” (1967), “French Cooking for the American Table” (1974), and “The Enlightened Cuisine” (1985).  An unsung hero of American cooking, light years ahead of many of his chef brethren, and an integral part of introducing French cuisine to America, rest in peace Chef René Verdon.

Sources for this article: Los Angeles Times, and Wikipedia.

100 Miles Shout Outs! Local events, mini-reviews, and mentions of things happening in the world of food:

#1  – The Good Neighbor Cookbook – consider submitting your, or somebody else’s, good-neighbor story to the Meet This Grateful Recipient or Meet This Good Neighbor Cook features on The Good Neighbor Cookbook blog by e-mailing authors Sara Quessenbery and Suzanne Schlosberg at: cooks@thegoodneighborcookbook.com. Let us know if you do by leaving a comment below!

My Status:  Still enjoying winter in So Cal and the lovely winter produce: amazing citrus, kale, broccoli, collard greens.  Continuing to blog, cook, and eat.

I’m published!! My recipe “Chef Wally’s Baked Papaya” was selected to be in the cookbook: “Foodista Best of Food Blogs Cookbook: 100 Great Recipes, Photographs, and Voices.”  You may order it here.

Upcoming Posts: More on my great-grandmother’s garden, and my California childhood.  A visit and tour of Ojai Valley citrus grower Friend’s Ranch. Cookbook Reviews: “The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook” by Rachel Saunders, “Quick-Fix Southern” by Rebecca Lang, and “Italy Dish by Dish: A Comprehensive Guide to Eating in Italy” by Monica Sartoni Cesari.

Image from iStockphoto.com

If only this were true.  ‘A chicken in every pot.’  A quotation I’ve heard all my life.  A phrase, a string of words, that is full of hope.  For some reason over this recent holiday period I started thinking about this in earnest.  I’m not sure why exactly.  The current political climate.  The financial disaster.  High unemployment.  Many Americans going without, doing with less.  It was, after all, Thanksgiving and Christmas — both holidays of giving and bounty.  I suppose I just answered my own question.

The Industrial Revolution led to the mechanization of our food supply; it allowed us the possibility to feed the masses, to nourish our growing nation.  It also created those factory farms we now so disdain.  But even with all that we’ve never been able to solve the problem of hunger in our country.  We still don’t live in a country where there’s a ‘chicken in every pot.’  But we should.  We have the means.  If there’s one positive to come from our ability to produce food on a mass scale, it should be that we’re able to feed every American.

The quotation is most widely attributed to President Herbert Hoover; it actually originated in 17th century France with King Henry IV who wished that each of his peasants would enjoy ‘a chicken in his pot every Sunday.’   It has also been linked to three other American presidents serving between 1920 and 1936.  Apparently Hoover never spoke the phrase but the Republican Party did use it in a 1928 campaign advertisement touting a previous period of ‘Republican prosperity’ that according to them provided a ‘chicken in every pot.  And a car in every backyard, to boot.’  Despite Hoover’s landslide election win, the Republican Party’s promises were short lived: seven months after he took office the stock market crash of 1929 took place ushering in the Great Depression.

King, president, Republican or Democrat; it would be nice if once and for all we could guarantee a ‘chicken in every pot.’

100 Miles Shout Outs! Local events, mini-reviews, and mentions of things happening in the Food World:

#1 – Thursday, February 3, 2011, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. ~ A Tasting Dinner at Mo-Chica with Live Music by Chachaca Nova – acclaimed Los Angeles Peruvian restaurant holds its 17th tasting dinner with music by the bossa nova group Chachaca Nova featuring our very own food blogger Bill Esparza of Street Gourmet LA on saxophone!  Cost $40.  Make reservations at Mo-Chica ~ http://mo-chica.com/

#2 – Mini-Review: A shout out to a recent cookbook I received ~ ‘Everday Grilling: 50 Recipes from Appetizers to Desserst’ by Sur La Table.  Grilling tips and recipes for first courses to desserts all (or part of the recipe) cooked on the grill.  Grilled Quesadillas.  Endless ways to grill vegetables.  Grilled Pizza (!)  Grilled Pound Cake (!?)

My Status: Enjoying winter in So Cal and the lovely winter produce: amazing citrus, kale, broccoli, collard greens.  Continuing to blog, cook, and eat.

I’m published!! My recipe ‘Chef Wally’s Baked Papaya’ was selected to be in the cookbook: ‘Foodista Best of Food Blogs Cookbook: 100 Great Recipes, Photographs, and Voices.’  You may order it here.

Upcoming Posts: More on my great-grandmother’s garden, and my California childhood.  A write up on Jennifer Piette and Erik Stenberg’s local, sustainable grocery delivery service Out of the Box Collective. Cookbook Reviews: The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook by Rachel Saunders, and Italy Dish by Dish: A Comprehensive Guide to Eating in Italy by Monica Sartoni Cesari.

Mary Mac’s Tea Room: 65 Years of Recipes from Atlanta’s Favorite Dining Room.  John Ferrell.  Andrews McMeel Publishing.  $27.99  (208p)  ISBN: 978-0-7407-9338-7

Recipes that don’t call for fancy seasoned salts, or Madagascar peppercorns?  Is there something wrong here?  No, of course not.  I was reminded when reading and cooking from Mary Mac’s Tea Room that a recipe can just be a recipe without all the frills that modern gastronomy seems to insist upon — recipes like they used to be.   I am generally so caught up in local, seasonal, fresh, top quality ingredients that I forget that food, and recipes at one point in time used only the basic larder ingredients: things like white flour, table salt, white sugar, and ground black pepper in a tin.  Very little had a foreign provenance, or the words sel de mer, or Tellicherry on the labels.

This book by John Ferrell, the current owner of Mary Mac’s Tea Room, is an homage to an Atlanta institution.  The restaurant has been existence since 1945; Ferrell purchased it in 1994 after being hand-picked by long-time owner Margaret Lupo.  The book is chock-full of 125 recipes, employee biographies, old menus, postcards, and artwork from the restaurant’s history.  Serving as many as 1,000 customers a day many of those are, and  have been politicians, sports figures and well-known celebrities from Cher to Richard Gere and the Dalai Lama.  Sprinkled throughout are photographs of the many local, regular patrons as well as those of Hillary Clinton, President Carter and First Lady Rosalyn Carter, the Dalai Lama, and Richard Gere.

I’m a sucker for food history and I loved this snippet from the front cover flap: “In the 1940’s, there were sixteen tea rooms in Atlanta.  They were opened by ladies as a way to make extra money, but the name was a misnomer; a tea room wasn’t a place to have tea, but a nicer version of a “meat and three.”  These meals appealed to folks who had moved to Atlanta from small towns in Georgia because they reminded them of their moms’ cooking.”  Mary Mac’s serves old-fashioned comfort food, Southern cooking.

Of the recipes I tried there were more than a few stand outs including ‘Daddy’s Oyster Stew,’ ‘Fried Chicken,’ ‘Black-Eyed Peas,’ and ‘Blackberry Jam Cake.’  I chose the fried chicken recipe because I thought fried chicken would be a true test of the restaurant’s talents with Southern cooking.  It passed the test, perfectly cooked, with a crunchy buttermilk crust.  A recipe I’d make again.  Shellfish and the south go hand in hand to me, and oysters cooked in milk has always been a favorite dish so ‘Daddy’s Oyster Stew’ was another choice.  Here’s the fun part about this recipe that goes back to my earlier conversation about ingredients.  It calls for “1 pint of fresh raw oysters, juices reserved.”  I read that and thought but there’s very little juice in fresh, raw oysters?  At the fish counter while shopping I stood before the fresh, raw oysters in their shells unsure until I noticed a shelf of seafood products in jars and cans: a 10 oz. jar of ‘fresh oysters’ in their juices!  A very simple yet comforting dish, warm oysters in milk with garlic and onion.   Black-Eyed Peas, salt pork, fatback, onion and the peas – ’nuff said.  The most popular dish I tried was the Blackberry Jam Cake with Caramel Frosting.  It consists of cocoa powder, blackberry jam, and apple sauce making it one of the moistest cakes I’ve ever eaten.  The addition of the caramel frosting made it a  full-on sugar coma inducing experience.  There are only two of us in the house so a big ole wedge went to a neighbor.  She liked it so much she asked for the recipe.

One other aspect of Mary Mac’s Tea Room I liked was how Ferrell incorporated the restaurant’s long-time employees into it.  There are photographs, histories and personal stories throughout the book.  There’s even a whole section devoted to “Our Staff.”  Many have been with Mary Mac’s for over thirty-five years.  That’s remarkable in a restaurant these days.  It speaks to the type of place it is.  A place some might consider a second home, a welcoming down-to-earth establishment very comfortable in its own skin.  In other words, a true Southern restaurant.  This book evokes all that and more.  It may be a book of restaurant recipes but it easily becomes a book of recipes one can cook and enjoy at home.

My Status:  Fall weather has arrived to So Cal.  Finally cold at night.  Pulled out the winter blankets.  As always more cooking, eating and blogging on the horizon.

Shout Outs!

‘Foodoodles,’ a new book from food historian and cartoonist, L. John Harris.  An amusing look at the history of the American food revolution that started in the 1970’s in Berkeley, California.  Alice Waters, Jeremiah Tower, James Beard, and Julia Child and more are discussed via text and cartoons, or ‘foodoodles.”  The foreword is written by friend, Chef Jeremiah Tower.  You’ll enjoy the history in this book, and giggle at the cartoons.  For more information, and to buy the book: http://www.foodoodles.com/

(Los Angeles)

Eat My Blog ~ the next Eat My Blog benefit bake sale is coming up soon.  Saturday, December 4, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Tender Greens in West Hollywood.  Come out and buy baked goods made by L.A.-area food bloggers.  All proceeds go to the Los Angeles Regional Foodbank.  I’ll be there buying goodies and cheering on Phil and Katrina of My Life as a Foodie.  Phil is donating ‘Cranberry Coconut Chews’ ~ sounds delicious, right?

Bistro LQ’s Tuesday night Cassoulet ‘Toulousain” Dinner.  I went once and hope to go again.  Being from Toulouse Chef Laurent Quenioux knows his way around a cassoulet.  Go!  You won’t be disappointed.  Every Tuesday night until December 28th.  Prix fixe at $35 per person.  www.bistrolq.com

News! I’m published!! My recipe ‘Chef Wally’s Baked Papaya’ was selected to be in the cookbook: ‘Foodista Best of Food Blogs Cookbook: 100 Great Recipes, Photographs, and Voices,’ published on October 19, 2010.  You may pre-order it here.  I am thrilled.

Upcoming Posts: a write up on Jennifer Piette and Erik Stenberg’s local, sustainable grocery delivery service Out of the Box Collective.  Cookbook Reviews: The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook by Rachel Saunders, and Bon Appétit Desserts by Barbara Fairchild.

I first heard mention of a garden at the White House in the Alice Waters biography ‘Alice Waters And Chez Panisse’ by Thomas McNamee. Apparently she and the Clintons were quite chummy — Bill had eaten at Chez Panisse, Alice’s Berkeley restaurant, a few times and was quite impressed. Based on their connection, she began a letter writing campaign trying to get the President to plant a vegetable and fruit garden on the White House lawn. Her efforts came to naught, the Bush administration came to power, and the idea sat fallow until the Obamas arrived.

My first reaction to the idea was that it was elitist and beneath the dignity of the White House, and the President, to have carrots and spinach poking out of the South Lawn. After all, less than 1oo miles away, there is surely local, organic produce that can be delivered to the White House within a few hours. But as I came to understand, the garden is not just food for the First Family; it’s a symbolic gesture, to show the rest of us that we too can be self-sustaining. And this is always a good thing, no matter what the current economic vicissitudes. Alice should be proud, her patience and doggedness finally paid off.

Gardens have a long history at the White House especially in the early days when they were planted to feed its occupants. The last vegetable garden planted at the White House was a Victory Garden that Eleanor Roosevelt planted in 1943 as part of the war effort. She planted it as an example to encourage the nation to plant their own Victory Gardens. The result worked prodigiously: In 1943 there were 20 million Victory Gardens in the country, and the produce they generated accounted for 1/3 of all vegetables eaten that year.

In my travels around the blogosphere I have read about a chef in Washington state who is turning her front yard into a garden in hopes that the neighbors will contribute to and take from it; and a man in Boulder, Colorado who convinced several neighbors that they should all plant gardens in their front yards and share the bounty. Those are two of many stories out there. There seems to be a ‘get-back-to-the-garden’ movement afoot with our new President leading the way.

Final comment: Alice wasn’t alone in persuading the Obamas to plant America’s Garden. Roger Doiron started his own campaign called Eat The View on February 6, 2008. He and his supporters had a big hand in making the First Garden happen. Michael Pollan writer of ‘In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto’ and ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals’ put a call out for a White House Farmer in November 2008 by writing to President-elect Obama in a New York Times article. These are only a few. There are other heroes of the movement out there as well.

Happy Gardening!