Here is an old French regional dish for you to try. Attempts
by presumptuous chefs to refine it have failed to subdue its basically
hearty nature. It demands some patience, but you will be abundantly
rewarded for your pains.
Farce double--literally, double stuffing--is the specialty
of La Tour Lambert, a mountainous village in Auvergne, that rugged
heart of the Massif Central. I have often visited La Tour Lambert:
the first time was in late May, when farce double is traditionally
served. I have observed the dish being made and discussed it with
local cooks.
The latter were skeptical about reproducing farce double elsewhere-not
out of pride, but because they were afraid the dish would make
no sense to a foreigner. (It is your duty to prove them wrong-and
nothing would make them happier if you did.) Furthermore, they
said, certain ingredients would be hard to find. Judicious substitution
is our answer to that. Without it, after all, we would have to
forgo most foreign cooking not out of a can.
The shoulder of lamb itself requires attention. You must buy it
from a butcher who can dress it properly. Tell him to include
the middle neck, the shoulder chops in the brisket, and part of
the foreshank. The stuffing will otherwise fall out of the roast.
In Auvergne, preparing the cut is no problem, since whole lambs
are roasted: the dish is considered appropriate for exceptional,
often communal feasts, of a kind that has become a rarity with
us.
All bones must be removed. If you leave this to the butcher, have
him save them for the deglazing sauce. The fell or filament must
be kept intact, or the flesh may crumble.
Set the boned forequarter on the kitchen table. Do not slice off
the purple inspection stamps but scour them with a brush dipped
in a weak solution of lye. The meat will need all the protection
it can get. Rinse and dry.
Marinate the lamb in a mixture of 2 qts of white wine, 2 qts of
olive oil, the juice of 16 lemons, salt, pepper, 16 crushed garlic
cloves, 10 coarsely chopped yellow onions, basil, rosemary, melilot,
ginger, allspice, and a handful of juniper berries. The juniper
adds a pungent, authentic note. In Auvergne, shepherds pick the
berries in late summer when they drive their flocks from the mountain
pastures. They deposit the berries in La Tour Lambert, where they
are pickled through the winter in cider brandy. The preparation
is worth making, but demands foresight.
If no bowl is capacious enough for the lamb and its marinade,
use a washtub. Without a tub, you must improvise. Friends of mine
in Paris resort to their bidet; Americans may have to fall back
on the kitchen sink, which is what I did the first time I made farce double. In La Tour Lambert, most houses have stone
marinating troughs. Less favored citizens use the municipal troughs
in the entrance of a cave in the hillside, just off the main square.
The lamb will have marinated satisfactorily in 5 or 6 days.
Allow yourself 3 hours for the stuffings. The fish balls or quenelles
that are their main ingredient can be prepared a day in advance
and refrigerated until an hour before use.
The quenelles of La Tour Lambert have traditionally been made
from chaste, a fish peculiar to the mountain lakes of Auvergne.
The name, a dialect word meaning "fresh blood," may
have been suggested by the color of its spreading gills, through
which it ingests its food. (It is a mouthless fish.) It is lured
to the surface with a skein of tiny beads that resemble the larvae
on which it preys, then bludgeoned with an underwater boomerang. Chaste has coarse, yellow-white flesh, with a mild but
inescapable taste. It has been vaguely and mistakenly identified
as a perch; our American perch, however, can replace it, provided
it has been caught no more than 36 hours before cooking. Other
substitutes are saltwater fish such as silver hake or green cod.
If you use a dry-fleshed fish, remember to order beef-kidney fat
at the butcher's to add to the fish paste. (Be sure to grind it
separately.)
To a saucepan filled with 2 1/2 cups of cold water, add salt,
pepper, 2 pinches of grated nutmeg, and 6 tbsp of butter. Boil.
Off heat, begin stirring in 2 1/2 cups of flour and continue as
you again bring the water to a boil. Take off heat. Beat in 5
eggs, one at a time, then 5 egg whites. Let the liquid cool.
Earlier, you will have ground 3 3/4 lbs of fish with a mortar
and pestle-heads, tails bones, and all-and forced them through
a coarse sieve. Do not use a grinder, blender, or cuisinart.
The sieve of La Tour Lambert is an elegant sock of meshed copper
wire, with a fitted ashwood plunger. It is kept immaculately bright.
Its apertures are shrewdly gauged to crumble the bones without
pulverizing the flesh. Into the strained fish,mix small amounts
of salt, white pepper, nutmeg, and chopped truffles--fresh ones,
if possible. (See truffle.)
Stir fish and liquid into an even paste.
Two hours before, you will have refrigerated 1 cup of the heaviest
cream available. Here, of course, access to a cow is a blessing.
The breathtakingly viscid cream of La Tour Lambert is kept in
specially excavated cellars. Those without one use the town chiller,
in the middle depths--cool but not cold--of the cave mentioned earlier.
Often I have watched the attendant women entering and emerging
from that room, dusky figures in cowls, shawls, and long gray
gowns, bearing earthenware jugs like offerings to a saint.
Beat the cool cream into the paste. Do it slowly: think of those
erect, deliberate Auvergnat women as they stand in the faint gloom
of the cave, beating with gestures of timeless calm. It should
take at least 15 minutes to complete the task.
At some previous moment, you will have made the stuffing for the
quenelles. (This is what makes the stuffing "double.")
It consists of the milt of the fish and the sweetbreads of the
lamb, both the neck and stomach varieties. (Don't forget to mention them to your butcher.) The milt is rapidly blanched. The
sweetbreads are diced, salted, spiced with freshly ground hot
pepper, and tossed for 6 minutes in clarified butter. Both are
then chopped very fine (blender permitted) and kneaded into an
unctuous mass with the help of 1 cup of lamb marrow and 3 tbsp
of aged Madeira.
I said at the outset that I am in favor of appropriate substitutions
in preparing farce double: but even though one eminent
authority has suggested it, stuffing the quenelles with banana
peanut butter is not appropriate.
The quenelles must now be shaped. Some writers who have discoursed
at length on the traditional Auvergnat shape urge its adoption
at all costs. I disagree. For the inhabitants of La Tour Lambert,
who attach great significance to farce double, it may be
right to feel strongly on this point. The same cannot be said
for families in Maplewood or Orange County. You have enough to
worry about as it is. If you are, however, an incurable stickler,
you should know that in Auvergne molds are used. They are called beurdes (they are, coincidentally, shaped like birds),
and they are available here. You can find them in any of the better
head shops.
But forget about bird molds. Slap your fish paste onto a board
and roll it flat. Spread on stuffing in parallel 1/2-inch bands
2 inches apart. Cut paste midway between bands, roll these strips
into cylinders, and slice the cylinders into sections no larger
than a small headache. Dip each piece in truffle crumbs. (See truffle.)
I refuse to become involved in the pros and cons of presteaming
the quenelles. The only steam in La Tour Lambert is a rare fragrant
wisp from the dampened fire of a roasting pit.
We now approach a crux in the preparation of farce double:
enveloping the quenelles and binding them into the lamb. I
must make a stern observation here; and you must listen to it.
You must take it absolutely to heart.
If the traditional ways of enveloping the quenelles are arduous,
they are in no way gratuitous. On them depends an essential component
of farce double, namely the subtle interaction of lamb
and fish. While the quenelles (and the poaching liquid that bathes
them) must be largely insulated from the encompassing meat, they
should not be wholly so. The quenelles must not be drenched in
roasting juice or the lamb in fishy broth, but an exchange should
occur, definite no matter how mild. Do not under any circumstance
use a baggie or Saran Wrap to enfold the quenelles. Of course
it's easier. So are TV dinners. For once, demand the utmost of
yourself: the satisfaction will astound you, and there is no
other way.
I mentioned this misuse of plastic to a native of La Tour
Lambert. My interlocutor, as if appealing for divine aid, leaned
back, lifted up his eyes, and stretched forth his arms. He was
standing at the edge of a marinating trough; its edges were slick
with marinade. One foot shot forward, he teetered for one moment
on the brink, and then down he went. Dripping oil, encrusted with
fragrant herbs; he emerged briskly and burst into tears.
There are two methods. I shall describe the first one briefly:
it is the one used by official cooks for public banquets. Cawl
(tripe skin) is scraped free of fat and rubbed with pumice stone
to a thinness approaching nonexistence. This gossamer is sewn
into an open pouch, which is filled with the quenelles and broth
before being sewn shut. The sealing of the pouch is preposterously
difficult. I have tried it six times; each time, ineluctable burstage
has ensued. Even the nimble-fingered, thimble-thumbed seamstresses
of La Tour Lambert find it hard. In their floodlit corner of the
festal cave, they are surrounded by a sizable choir of wailing
boys whose task is to aggravate their intention to a pitch of
absolute, sustained concentration. If the miracle always occurs,
it is never less than miraculous.
The second method is to seal the quenelles inside a clay shell.
This demands no supernatural skills, merely attention.
Purveyors of reliable cooking clay now exist in all major cities.
The best are Italian. In New York, the most dependable are to
be found in east Queens. (For addresses, see Appendix).
Stretch and tack down two 18-inch cheesecloth squares. Sprinkle
until soaking (mop up puddles, however). Distribute clay in pats
and roll flat until entire surface is evenly covered. The layer
of clay should be no more than 1/16 inch thick. Scissor edges
clean.
Drape each square on an overturned 2-qt bowl. Fold back flaps.
Mold into hemispheres. Check fit, then dent edge of each hemisphere
with forefinger so that when dents are facing each other, they
form a 3/4-inch hole.
Be sure to prepare the shell at least 48 hours in advance so that
it hardens properly. (If you are a potter, you can bake it in
the oven; if not, you risk cracking.) As the drying clay flattens
against the cheesecloth, tiny holes will appear. Do not plug
them. Little will pass through them: just enough to allow the
necessary exchange of savors.
Make the poaching liquid-3 qts of it- like ordinary fish stock
(q.v.). The wine used for this in Auvergne is of a local sparkling
variety not on the market; but any good champagne is an acceptable
substitute.
By "acceptable substitute," I mean one acceptable to
me. Purists have cited the fish stock as a reason for not making farce double at all. In La Tour Lambert, they rightly assert,
the way the stock is kept allows it to evolve without spoiling:
in the amphora-like jars that are stored in the coldest depths
of the great cave, a faint, perpetual fermentation gives the perennial
brew an exquisite, violet-flavored sourness. This, they say, is
inimitable. I say that 30 drops of decoction of elecampane blossoms
will reproduce it so perfectly as to convince the most vigilant
tongue.
Fifteen minutes before roasting time, put the quenelles in one
of the clay hemispheres. Set the other against it, dent to dent.
Seal the seam with clay, except for the hole, and thumb down well.
Hold the sphere in one hand with the hole on top. With a funnel,
pour in hot poaching liquid until it overflows, then empty
1 cup of liquid. This is to keep the shell from bursting from
within when the broth reaches a boil.
Be sure to keep the shell in your hand: set in a bowl, one bash
against its side will postpone your dinner for several days at
least. In La Tour Lambert. where even more fragile gut is used,
the risks are lessened by placing the diaphanous bags in wooden
reticules. It is still incredible that no damage is ever done
to them on the way to the stuffing tables. To avoid their cooling,
they are carried at a run by teen-age boys, for whom this is a
signal honor: every Sunday throughout the following year, they
will be allowed to wear their unmistakable lily-white smocks.
Earlier in the day, you will have anointed the lamb, inside and
out: inside, with fresh basil, coriander leaves, garlic, and ginger
thickly crushed into walnut oil (this is a must); outside,
with mustard powder mixed with--ideally--wild-boar fat. I know that
wild boars do not roam our woods (sometimes, on my walks through
Central Park, I feel I may soon meet one): bacon fat will do--about
a pint of it.
You will have left the lamb lying outside down. Now nestle the
clay shell inside the boneless cavity. Work it patiently into
the fleshly nooks, then urge the meat in little bulges around
it, pressing the lamb next to the shell, not against it, with
the gentlest possible nudges. When the shell is deeply ensconced,
fold the outlying flaps over it, and shape the whole into a regular
square cushion roast. Sew the edges of the meat together, making
the seams hermetically tight.
If the original roasting conditions will surely exceed your grasp,
a description of them may clarify your goals.
In Auvergne, the body of the lamb is lowered on wetted ropes into
a roasting pit. It comes to rest on transverse bars set close
to the floor of the pit. Hours before, ash boughs that have dried
through three winters are heaped in the pit and set ablaze: by
now they are embers. These are raked against the four sides and
piled behind wrought-iron grids into glowing walls. The cast-iron
floor stays hot from the fire. When the lamb is in place, a heated
iron lid is set over the pit. The lid does more than refract heat
from below. Pierced with a multitude of small holes, it allows
for aspersions of water on coals that need damping and the sprinkling
of oil on the lamb, which is thus basted throughout its roasting
in a continuous fine spray. Previously, I might add, the lamb
has been rapidly seared over an open fire. Four senior cooks manage
this by standing on high stepladders and manipulating the poles
and extensible thongs used to shift the animal, which they precisely
revolve over the flames so that it receives an even grilling.
Thus the onslaught of heat to which the lamb is subjected
is, while too restrained to burn it, intense enough to raise the
innermost broth to the simmering point.
Carefully lower the lamb into a 25-inch casserole. (If you have
no such casserole, buy one. If it will not fit in your oven, consider
this merely one more symptom of the shoddiness of our age, which
the popularity of dishes like farce double may someday
remedy.) Cover. You will have turned on the oven at maximum heat
for 45 minutes at least. Close the oven door and lower the thermostat
to 445°. For the next 5 hours, there is nothing to do except
check the oven thermometer occasionally and baste the roast with
juices from the casserole every 10 minutes. If you feel like catnapping,
have no compunctions about it.
Do not have anything to drink--considering what lies in
store for you, it is a foolish risk. The genial cooks of La Tour
Lambert may fall to drinking, dancing, and singing at this point,
but remember that they have years of experience behind them; and
you, unlike them, must act alone.
One song always sung during the roasting break provides valuable
insight into the character of the Auvergnat community. It tells
the story of a blacksmith's son who sets out to find his long-lost
mother. She is dead, but he cannot remember her death, nor can
he accept it. His widowed father has taken as second wife a pretty
woman younger than himself. She is hardly motherly toward her
stepson: one day, after he has grown to early manhood, she seduces
him--in the words of the song, "she does for him what mother
never did for her son." This line recurs throughout as a
refrain.
It is after the shock of this event that the son leaves in quest
of his mother. His father repeatedly tries to dissuade him, insisting
that she is dead, or that, if she is alive, it is only in a place
"as near as the valley beyond the hill and far away as the
stars." In the end, however, he gives his son a sword and
a purse full of money and lets him go. The step-mother, also hoping
to keep the son from leaving, makes another but this time futile
attempt to "do for him what mother never did for her son."
At the end of three days, the son comes to a city. At evening
he meets a beautiful woman with long red hair. She offers him
hospitality, which he accepts, and she attends lovingly to his
every want. Pleasure and hope fill his breast. He begins wondering.
He asks himself if this woman might not be his lost mother. But
when night falls, the red-haired woman takes him into her bed
and "does for him what mother never did for her son."
The son knows she cannot be the one he seeks. Pretending to sleep,
he waits for an opportunity to leave her; but, at midnight, he
sees her draw a length of strong, sharp cord from beneath her
pillow and stretch it towards him. The son leaps up, seizes his
sword, and confronts the woman. Under its threat, she confesses
that she was planning to murder him for the sake of his purse,
as she has done with countless travelers: their corpses lie rotting
in her cellar. The son slays the woman with his sword, wakes up
a nearby priest to assure a Christian burial for her and her victims,
and goes his way.
Three days later, he arrives at another city. As day wanes, a
strange woman again offers him hospitality, and again he accepts.
She is even more beautiful than the first; and her hair is also
long, but golden. She lavishes her attentions on the young man,
and in such profusion that hope once again spurs him to wonder
whether she might not be his lost mother. But with the coming
of darkness, the woman with the golden hair takes him into her
bed and "does for him what mother never did for her son."
His hopes have again been disappointed. Full of unease, he feigns
sleep. Halfway through the night he hears footsteps mounting the
stairs. He scarcely has time to leap out of bed and grasp his
sword before two burly villains come rushing into the room. They
attack him, and he cuts them down.
Then, turning on the woman, he forces her at swordpoint to confess
that she had hoped to make him her prisoner and sell him into
slavery. Saracen pirates would have paid a high price for one
of such strength and beauty. The son slays her, wakes up a priest
to see that she and her henchmen receive Christian burial, and
goes his way.
Another three days' journey brings him to a third city. There,
at end of day, the son meets still another fair woman, the most
beautiful of all, with flowing, raven-black hair. Alone of the
three, she seems to recognize him; and when she takes him under
her roof and bestows on him more comfort and affection than he
had ever dreamed possible, he knows that this time his hope cannot
be mistaken. But when night comes, she takes him into her bed,
and she, like the others, "does for him what mother never
did for her son." She has drugged his food. He cannot help
falling asleep; only, at midnight, the touch of cold iron against
his throat rouses him from his stupor. Taking up his sword, he
points it in fury at the breast of the woman who has so beguiled
him. She begs him to leave her in peace, but she finally acknowledges
that she meant to cut his throat and suck his blood. She is an
old, old witch who has lost all her powers but one, that of preserving
her youth. This she does by drinking the blood of young men. The
son runs her through with his sword. With a weak cry, she falls
to the floor a wrinkled crone. The son knows that a witch cannot
be buried in consecrated ground, and he goes his way.
But the young man travels no further. He is bitterly convinced
of the folly of his quest; he has lost all hope of ever finding
his mother; wearily he turns homeward.
On his way he passes through the cities where he had first faced
danger. He is greeted as a hero. Thanks to the two priests, all
know that it was he who destroyed the evil incarnate in their
midst. But he takes no pride in having killed two women who "did
for him what mother never did for her son."
On the ninth day of his return, he sees from the mountain pass
he has reached, the hill beyond which his native village lies.
In the valley between, a shepherdess is watching her flock. At
his approach she greets him tenderly, for she knows the blacksmith's
son and has loved him for many years. He stops with her to rest.
She has become, he notices, a beautiful young woman--not as beautiful,
perhaps, as the evil three: but her eyes are wide and deep, and
her long hair is brown.
The afternoon goes by. Still the son does not leave. At evening,
he partakes of the shepherdess's frugal supper. At nighttime,
when she lies down, he lies down beside her; and she, her heart
brimming with gladness, "does for him what mother never did
for her son." The shepherdess falls asleep. The son cannot
sleep; and he is appalled, in the middle of the night, to see
the shepherdess suddenly rise up beside him. But she only touches
his shoulder as if to waken him and points to the starry sky.
She tells him to look up. There, she says, beyond the darkness,
the souls of the dead have gathered into one blazing light. With
a cry of pain, the son asks, "Then is my mother there?"
The shepherdess answers that she is. His mother lives beyond the
stars, and the stars themselves are chinks in the night through
which the hateful light of the dead and the unborn is revealed
to the world. "Oh, Mother, Mother," the young man weeps.
The shepherdess then says to him, "Who is now mother to your
sleep and waking? Who else can be the mother of your joy and pain?
I shall henceforth be the mother of every memory; and from this
night on, I alone am your mother-even if now, and tomorrow, and
all the days of my life, I do for you what mother never did for
her son." In his sudden ecstasy, the blacksmith's son understands.
He has discovered his desire.
And so, next morning, he brings the shepherdess home. His father,
when he sees them, weeps tears of relief and joy; and his stepmother,
sick with remorse, welcomes them as saviors. Henceforth they all
live in mutual contentment; and when, every evening, the approach
of darkness kindles new yearning in the young man's heart and
he turns to embrace his wife, she devotedly responds and never
once fails, through the long passing years, to "do for him
what mother never did for her son."
The connection of this song with farce double lies, I was
told, in an analogy between the stars and the holes in the lid
of the roasting pit.
When your timer sounds for the final round, you must be in fighting
trim: not aggressive, but supremely alert. You now have to work
at high speed and with utmost delicacy. The meat will have swelled
in cooking: it is pressing against the clay shell harder than
ever, and one jolt can spell disaster. Do not coddle yourself
by thinking that this pressure is buttressing the shell. In La
Tour Lambert, the handling of the cooked lamb is entrusted to
squads of highly trained young men: they are solemn as pallbearers
and dexterous as shortstops, and their virtuosity is eloquent
proof that this is no time for optimism.
Slide the casserole slowly out of the oven and gently set it down
on a table covered with a thrice-folded blanket. You will now
need help. Summon anyone--a friend, a neighbor, a husband, a lover,
a sibling, even a guest--so that the two of you can slip four broad
wooden spatulas under the roast, one on each side, and ease it
onto a platter. The platter should be resting on a short surface
such as a cushion or a mattress (a small hammock would be perfect).
Wait for the meat to cool before moving it onto anything harder.
Your assistant may withdraw.
Meanwhile attend to the gravy. No later than the previous evening,
you will have made 1 1/2 qts of stock with the bones from the
lamb shoulder, together with the customary onions, carrots, celery,
herb bouquet, cloves, scallions, parsnips, and garlic (see stock),
to which you must not hesitate to add any old fowl, capon, partridge,
or squab carcasses that are gathering rime in your deep freeze,
or a young rabbit or two. Pour out the fat in the casserole and
set it on the stove over high heat. Splash in enough of the same
good champagne to scrape the casserole clean, and boil. When the
wine has largely evaporated, take off heat, and add 2 cups of
rendered pork fat. Set the casserole over very low heat and make
a quick roux or brown sauce with 3 cups of flour. Then slowly
pour in 2 cups of the blood of the lamb, stirring it in a spoonful
at a time. Finally, add the stock. Raise the heat to medium high
and let the liquid simmer down to the equivalent of 13 cupfuls.
While the gravy reduces, carefully set the platter with the roast
on a table, resting one side on an object the size of this cookbook,
so that it sits at a tilt. Place a broad shallow bowl against
the lower side. If the clay shell now breaks, the poaching broth
will flow rapidly into the. bowl. Prop the lamb with a spatula
or two to keep it from sliding off the platter.
Slit the seams in the meat, spread its folds, and expose the clay
shell. Put on kitchen gloves-the clay will be scalding-and coax
the shell from its depths. Set it in a saucepan, give it a smart
crack with a mallet, and remove the grosser shards. Ladle out
the quenelles and keep them warm in the oven in a covered, buttered
dish with a few spoonfuls of the broth. Strain the rest of the
liquid, reduce it quickly to a quarter of its volume, and then
use what is left of the champagne to make a white wine sauce as
explained on p. 888. Nap the quenelles with sauce, and serve.
If you have worked fast and well, by the time your guests finish
the quenelles, the lamb will have set long enough for its juices
to have withdrawn into the tissues without its getting cold. Pour
the gravy into individual heated bowls. Place a bowl in front
of each guest, and set the platter with the lamb, which you will
have turned outside up, at the center of the table. The meat is
eaten without knives and forks. Break off a morsel with the fingers
of the right hand, dip it in gravy, and pop it into your mouth.
In Auvergne, this is managed with nary a dribble; but lobster
bibs are a comfort.
(Do not be upset if you yourself have lost all desire to eat.
This is a normal, salutary condition. Your satisfaction will have
been in the doing, not in the thing done. But observe the reaction
of your guests, have a glass of wine [see below], and you may
feel the urge to try one bite, and perhaps a second . . .)
It is a solemn moment when, at the great communal spring banquet,
the Mayor of La Tour Lambert goes from table to table and with
shining fingers gravely breaks the skin of each lamb. After this
ceremony, however, the prevailing gaiety reasserts itself. After
all, the feast of farce double is not only a time-hallowed
occasion but a very pleasant one. It is a moment for friendships
to be renewed, for enemies to forgive one another, for lovers
to embrace. At its origin, curiously enough, the feast was associated
with second marriages (some writers think this gave the dish its
name). Such marriages have never been historically explained;
possibly they never took place. What is certain is that the feast
has always coincided with the arrival, from the lowlands, of shepherds
driving their flocks to the high pastures where they will summer.
Their coming heralds true spring and its first warmth; and it
restores warmth, too, between the settled mountain craftsmen of
La Tour Lambert and the semi-nomadic shepherds from the south.
The two communities are separate only in their ways of life. They
have long been allied by esteem, common interest, and, most important,
by blood. Marriages between them have been recorded since the
founding of the village in the year one thousand; and if many
a shepherd's daughter has settled in La Tour Lambert as the wife
of a wheelwright or turner, many an Auvergnat son, come autumn,
has left his father's mill or forge to follow the migrant flocks
toward Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. Perhaps the legend of second
marriages reflects a practice whereby a widow or widower took
a spouse among the folk of which he was not a member. The eating
of farce double would then be exquisitely appropriate;
for there is no doubt at all that the composition of the dish--lamb
from plains by the sea, fish from lakes among the grazing lands--deliberately
embodies the merging of these distinct peoples in one community.
I should add that at the time the feast originated, still another
group participated harmoniously in its celebration: pilgrims from
Burgundy on their way to Santiago de Compostela. Just as the people
of La Tour Lambert provided fish for the great banquet and the
shepherds contributed their lambs, the pilgrims supplied kegs
of new white wine that they brought with them from Chassagne,
the Burgundian village now called Chassagne-Montrachet. Their
wine became the invariable accompaniment for both parts of farce
double; and you could hardly do better than to adopt the custom.
Here, at least, tradition can be observed with perfect fidelity.
It is saddening to report that, like the rest of the world, La
Tour Lambert has undergone considerable change. Shepherds no longer
walk their flocks from the south but ship them by truck. The lakes
have been fished out, and a substitute for chaste is imported
frozen from Yugoslavia. The grandson of the last wheelwright works
in the tourist bureau, greeting latter-day pilgrims who bring
no wine. He is one of the very few of his generation to have remained
in the village. (The cement quarry, which was opened with great
fanfare ten years ago as a way of providing jobs, employs mainly
foreign labor. Its most visible effect has been to shroud the
landscape in white dust.) I have heard, however, that the blacksmith
still earns a good living making wrought-iron lamps. Fortunately,
the future of farce double is assured, at least for the
time being. The festal cave has been put on a commercial footing,
and it now produces the dish for restaurants in the area all year
round (in the off season, on weekends only). It is open to the
public. I recommend a visit if you pass nearby.
Eat the quenelles ungarnished. Mashed sorrel goes nicely with
the lamb.
Serves thirteen.