Читать книгу The Feasts of Autolycus: The Diary of a Greedy Woman - Elizabeth Robins Pennell - Страница 6

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Spring is the year's playtime. Who, while trees are growing green and flowers are budding, can toil with an easy conscience? Later, mere "use and wont" accustoms the most sensitive to sunshine and green leaves and fragrant blossoms. It is easy to work in the summer. But spring, like wine, goes to the head and gladdens the heart of man, so that he is fit for no other duty than the enjoyment of this new gladness. If he be human, and not a mere machine, he must and will choose it for the season of his holiday.

This is why in the spring the midday breakfast appeals with most charm. It may be eaten in peace, with no thought of immediate return to inconsiderate desk or tyrannical easel. A stroll in the park, a walk across the fields, or over the hills and far away, should be the most laborious labour to follow. It would be a crime, indeed, to eat a dainty breakfast, daintily designed and served, in the bustle and nervous hurry of a working day. But when the sunny hours bring only new pleasure and new capacity for it, what better than to break their sweet monotony with a light, joyous feast that worthily plays the herald to the evening's banquet?

It must be light, however: light as the sunshine that falls so softly on spotless white linen and flawless silver; gay and gracious as the golden daffodils in their tall glass. The table's ornaments should be few: would not the least touch of heaviness mar the effect of spring? Why, then, add to the daffodils? See, only, that they are fresh, just plucked from the cool green woodland, the morning dew still wet and shining on their golden petals, and make sure that the glass, though simple, is as shapely as Venice or Whitefriars can fashion it.

Daffodils will smile a welcome, if radishes come to give them greeting; radishes, round and rosy and crisp; there is a separate joy in the low sound of teeth crunching in their crispness. Vienna rolls (and London can now supply them) and rich yellow butter from Devon dairies carry out the scheme of the first garden-like course.

Sweeter smiles fall from the daffodils, if now they prove motive to a fine symphony in gold; as they will if omelette aux rognons be chosen as second course. Do not trust the omelet to heavy-handed cook, who thinks it means a compromise between piecrust and pancake. It must be frothy, and strong in that quality of lightness which gives the keynote to the composition as a whole. Enclosed within its melting gold, at its very heart, as it were, lie the kidneys elegantly minced and seasoned with delicate care. It is a dish predestined for the midday breakfast, too beautiful to be wasted on the early, dull, morning hours; too immaterial for the evening's demands.

Its memory will linger pleasantly, even when pilaff de volaille à l'Indienne succeeds, offering a new and more stirring symphony in the same radiant gold. For golden is the rice, stained with curry, as it encircles the pretty, soft mound of chicken livers, brown and delicious. Here the breakfast reaches its one substantial point; but meat more heavy would seem vulgar and gross. The curry must not be too hot, but rather gentle and genial like the lovely May sunshine.

Now, a pause and a contrast. Gold fades into green. As are the stalks to the daffodils, so the dish of petits pois aux laitues to pilaff and omelette. The peas are so young that no device need be sought to disguise their age; later on, like faded beauty, they may have recourse to many a trick and a pose, but not as yet. The lettuce, as unsophisticated, will but emphasise their exquisite youth. It is a combination that has all the wonderful charm of infant leaves and tentative buds on one and the same branch of the spring-fired bush.

No sweet. Would not the artifice of jellies and cream pall after such a succession of Nature's dear tributes? Surely the menu should finish as it began, in entrancing simplicity. Port Salut is a cheese that smells of the dairy; that, for all its monastic origin, suggests the pink and white Hetty or Tess with sleeves well uprolled over curved, dimpling arms. Eat it with Bath Oliver biscuits, and sigh that the end should come so soon. Where the need to drag in the mummy at the close of the feast? The ancients were wise; with the last course does it not ever stare at you cruelly, with mocking reminder that eating, like love, hath an end?

Graves is the wine to drink with daffodil-crowned feast—golden Graves, light as the breakfast, gay as the sunshine, gladdening as the spring itself. Coffee completes the composition nobly, if it be black and strong. And for liqueur, Benedictine, in colour and feeling alike, enters most fittingly into the harmony. Smoke cigarettes from Virginia, that southern land of luxuriant spring flowers.

There is no monotony in spring sunshine; why, then, let spring's breakfast always strike the same monotonous note? Another day, another mood, and so, as logical consequence, another menu. From your own garden gather a bunch of late tulips, scarlet and glowing, but cool in their shelter of long tapering leaves. Fill a bowl with them: it may be a rare bronze from Japan, or a fine piece of old Delft, or anything else, provided it be somewhat sumptuous as becomes the blossoms it holds. Open with that triumph of colour which would have enchanted a Titian or a Monticelli: the roseate salmon of the Rhine, smoked to a turn, and cut in thin slices, all but transparent. It kindles desire and lends new zest to appetite.

After so ardent a preparation, what better suited for ensuing course than œufs brouillés aux pointes d'asperges? the eggs golden and fleecy as the clouds in the sunset's glow; the asparagus points imparting that exquisite flavour which is so essentially their own. Cloudlike, the loveliness gradually and gracefully disappears, as in a poet's dream or a painter's impression, and spring acquires a new meaning, a new power to enchant.

Who, with a soul, could pass on to a roast or a big heating joint? More to the purpose is ris de veau à la Toulouse, the sweetbreads broiled with distinction, and then, in pretty fluted caissons, surrounded with Béchamel sauce and ravishing ragoût of mushrooms and cock's combs. They are light as a feather, but still a trifle flamboyant in honour of the tulips, while the name carries with it gaiety from the gay southern town of the Jeux Floraux.

Next, a salad is not out of place. Make it of tomatoes, scarlet and stirring, like some strange tropical blossoms decking the shrine of the sun. Just a suspicion of shallot in the bowl; the perfect dressing of vinegar and oil, pepper and salt; and the luxuriant tropics could not yield a richer and more fragrant offering. It is a salad that vies with Cleopatra in its defiance to custom. Love for it grows stronger with experience. The oftener it is enjoyed the greater the desire to enjoy it again.

Why, then, venture to destroy the impression it leaves with the cloying insipidity of some ill-timed sweet? It is almost too early for strawberries worth the eating, save in a macédoine, and they alone would come next in order, without introducing an element of confusion in the well-proportioned breakfast of spring. A savoury, too, would, at this special juncture, have its drawbacks. Cheese again best fulfils the conditions imposed. But now, something stronger, something more definite than Port Salut is called for; if Camembert prove the cheese of your choice, there will be no chance for criticism. One warning: see that it is ripe; for the Camembert that crumbles in its dryness is nothing short of iniquitous.

Tulips and tomatoes point to Claret as the wine to be drunk. Burgundy is for the evening, when candles are lighted, and the hours of dreaming have begun. St. Estèphe, at noon, has infinite merit, and responds to the tulip's call with greater warmth than any white wine, whether from the vineyards of France or Germany, of Hungary or Italy. Coffee, as a matter of course, is to the elegantly-designed breakfast what the Butterfly is to the Nocturne. And when all is said, few liqueurs accord with it so graciously as Cognac; that is, if the dishes to precede it have tended to that joyful flamboyancy born of the artist's exuberance in moments of creation.

Eat either breakfast, or both; and be thankful that spring comes once a year.