Bordman Aileen - Monets Palate Cookbook: the Artist & His Kitchen at Giverny

Claude Monet was much more than an artist. Although he claimed to be good at only two of lifes endeavorspainting and gardeninghe lived a life that included entertaining leaders in art and politics in the large dining room of his beautiful home in the bucolic Normandy countryside.

However, in addition to the famous home and magnificent flower garden at Giverny, hidden away at the other end of the village was his bountiful two-acre vegetable garden. It was cared for by his potager gardener Florimond, who lived at La Maison Bleue (the Blue House), near Monets home, and who toiled at maintaining a constant supply of fresh produce during the growing season for Monets family and many illustrious guests.

Almost twenty years ago my mother and I had the honor of visiting GivernyMonets house, the flower garden and adjacent water garden. We were greeted with kindness by Helen Rappel Bordman, who, I later learned, had been part of the renaissance of Monets home and garden at Giverny. We visited the interior of his home, including his splendid kitchen and bright yellow dining room. The fact that Monet was as passionate about his garden and cuisine as he was about his art was enchanting. Our visit to Normandy, with its special quality of sunlight, terrain and beauty, made visually apparent to us why the unique light, the play of shadow and mist, first attracted Monet and other Impressionists to this province. In addition, the delicious bounty of Normandy, including its prized apples, cheeses and butter, are so distinct from the other regions of France we had visited.

I am happy to see that the authors, Aileen Bordman and Derek Fell, have not restricted their focus to Monets culinary interests and his kitchen garden, but also reference his homes interior, which is really an extension of his art, and the flower garden, which Monet declared to be my one and only masterpiece. Treated individually they each represent fragments that complete an entrancing picture of what might be described as one of the happiest households in France. The wonderful farm-to-table aspect of Monets time has once again become relevant in the twenty-first century. With this in mind, I am so happy that the recipes and photography in Monets Palate Cookbook have brought Claude Monets beloved kitchen garden back to life.

Meryl Streep

Top left: The Water Lily Pond, 1899; Bottom right: The Luncheon, 1881

I want to put in an order for two bottles of champagne and some morel mushroomsthats what I fancy for some reason...

Monet, to his wife, in a letter from Italy

Monets Palate Cookbook: The Artist and His Kitchen Garden At Giverny is a unique culinary journey into the fascinating world of Claude Monet, his extraordinary kitchen garden and his taste for fine food. Monet surrounded himself with beautiful flower, fruit and vegetable gardens and developed a gourmet palate, supplying his table with the best of ingredients and even raising his own free-range chickens, turkeys and ducks. All of this provided motifs for his work and inspiration for his table.

Monets Palate will be your culinary guide to a life well lived, formulated by Monet more than a hundred years before the importance of the farm-to-table or garden-to-table lifestyle was fully appreciated. His desire for fresh garden vegetables and herbs extended beyond the flavor and health benefits that they could provide. His need to cultivate a kitchen garden, plant seeds and work the soil with his fingers allowed him to connect with nature in a spiritual way, feed his soul and see beauty oblivious to others.

From Calvados apple liqueur to Camembert cheese, the wonderful Normandy cuisine serves as a backdrop to Monets rarefied culinary passion. His quest to travel the world in search of stimulating artistic motifs was also driven by his desire to discover new foods, memorable restaurant recipes and the finest strains of vegetable seeds for his kitchen garden. These discoveries were brought back to Giverny in fat recipe-filled notebooks for Marguerite, his cook, to replicate and serve in his radiant yellow dining room. The precious seeds carried in his pockets were for Florimondin charge of his large kitchen gardento grow outdoors if they were hardy, and in cold frames if they needed more heat than the relatively cool Normandy climate could provide.

Top left: Still Life with Melon, 1872; Top right: Still Life with Apples and Grapes, 1880; Bottom left: Still Life with Pears and Grapes, 1880

Considered by many to be the father of Impressionism, Claude Monet was one of a group of avant-garde painters who rebelled against traditional concepts of artistic merit. Until the invention of photography, a work of art was judged by its realism. When artists realized that it was impossible to be more realistic than a photograph, they sought new ways of artistic expression. Monet said it best when he told a journalist: I paint what I see; I paint what I remember and I paint what I feel. It was what an artist felt about a subject that broke with tradition. Because this new style of painting was so different from classical art, and represented what an artist saw with his inner eye, it took a long time for the public to appreciate its value. Until his mid-forties Monet struggled to earn a living. Only when his work began to sell to American collectors was he able to purchase his own home in Giverny and live the good life of a largely self-sufficient lifestyle.