Robert Farrar Capon - Light Theology and Heavy Cream: The Culinary Adventures of Pietro and Madeline

The Culinary Adventures
of Pietro & Madeleine

Robert Farrar Capon

2004 Robert Farrar Capon
All rights reserved.

Published in the United States of America by Cowley Publications, a division of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any meansincluding photocopyingwithout the prior written permission of Cowley Publications, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Capon, Robert Farrar.

Light theology & heavy cream : the culinary adventures of Pietro & Madeleine / Robert Farrar Capon.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-156101-266-4

2. TableReligious aspectsChristianity. I. Title: Light theology and heavy cream. II. Title.

BR115.N87C37 2004

242dc22 2004018753

This book was printed in Canada on acid-free paper.

Cover Design: Jennifer Hopcroft
Cover Art: Doug Compton

Cowley Publications
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Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
800-225-1534 www.cowley.org

The book before you can best be described as culinary and theological snack fooda literary meal consisting entirely of hors doeuvre. While it is not without nutritive value on the count of either cooking or thinking, it is principally intended as a lark. Our personae as Pietro and Madeleinethe protagonists, or better said, the antagonists in this bookare extrapolations of the idiosyncrasies of the author and his wife, Valerie. He stumbled on the name Madeleine for her early in their marriage when he took to complimenting her breakfast efforts by saying, inexplicably, Good coffee, Madeleine. The name Pietro was inspired by some occasional pieces that John Leonard wrote for The New York Timespieces in which a fictitious critic named Dmitri served as a mouthpiece for Leonards own opinions. Dmitri having been used up or burned out, Pietro was created to fill his shoes. We are pleased to have been presented as (mostly) delightful characters, though we are not without a hankering, at some future date, to give the author a dose of his own medicine.

Still, our fondness for him outpaces our objections. For a writer so deeply in love with theology and cookery, he has the happy faculty of being not only able but eager to offend the powers that be in both fields. He gleefully berates the church for being more preoccupied with stringencies of religion than with the Good News of forgiveness, and he twists the tails of diet-mongers and food snobs with equal abandon. There is no king in either country whose lack of clothes he does not stigmatize. Therefore as he lurks behind our masks in this potpourri of fulminations, bickering, and badinage, we become a fun-house mirror held up to his own style. If he has seldom been content to stay on one subject, here he flits wildly between the dozens of old films in the multiplex of his mind. If he has always been perfectly substantial and perfectly silly at the same time, here he propels himself faster and farther in both directions.

For the record, all the pieces in this book were composed between 1978 and 1988. He has made no effort to update references to the clergy, politicians, or food prices of that period: Jim Bakker, Gary Hart, Ronald Reagan, and a three-star restaurant that charged a mere sixty dollars for a dinner for two (wine and tips included) have all been left as they were to exasperate or titillate you anewor to make you pine for the days when the dollar actually worked for its living. If you have enjoyed the authors light touch in the rest of his oeuvre, you will continue to enjoy it here. On the other hand, if you have deemed his work mere popularizing, you will no doubt relegate this book to bathroom reading. The author informs us that he is content with either judgmentany attention being better than none at all.

We commend this smrgsbord to you and we congratulate Cowley Publications on their whimsical willingness to publish a book that falls, more resolutely than most, between two stools. Given the irony of a God who saves the world by foolishness and weakness, and the hilarity by which he gives us corn, wine, and oilnot to mention his wonderfully two-faced creatures such as butter, salt, tobacco, and pork fatthis is no world in which to land on one side of a paradox. Nibble away, then. You have nothing to lose but your sad, straight face and your narrow waistline.

Pietro and Madeleine, Shelter Island, New York, 2004

I hate Lent! Madeleine fumed. Who ever dreamed up the dumb idea of having people make themselves miserable for forty days? I cant stand one more minute of it.

Pietro had to deal with the same complaint every year. He decided to try firmness this time. Let me point out that the amount of Lent on which that childish outburst was based should be an embarrassment to you. This is only Ash Wednesday and you are not even halfway through the altogether delicious tomato soup I made you for supper.

You should be embarrassed! This soup is half heavy cream, at least. You call that fasting? I call it hypocrisyand high in calories besides. Now if I were going to fast...

He cut her off. That is perhaps the shabbiest argument in the world. Its the old, village-atheist cheap shot: I wouldnt be caught dead doing what youre doing; but if I did it, Id do it all the way. People who disapprove of an entire discipline have no business offering to improve other peoples exercise of it. Furthermore, you misunderstand the point of the Lenten fast.

Its the Lenten fast thats a misunderstanding. Supposedly, were saved on the basis of grace and forgiveness, not merit. Whats the good of encouraging ourselves to think we can pile up a whole lot of brownie points by fasting?

As I was saying, Pietro continued blandly, the fast is not a matter of getting merit badges for strenuous exertion. It is, to begin with, a corporate observance. Just as the faithful join one another in feasting to celebrate the mighty acts theyre saved by, so they join in fasting to remind themselves of the more depressing stuff theyre saved from.

Who needs to fast for that? They could watch the eleven oclock news.

Let me finish. Therefore, just as it is not central to the Easter feast, say, for any particular group of the faithful to sound like the Metropolitan Opera chorus or cook on a par with Lutece, so it is unnecessary, in the case of the Lenten fast, for them to end up with distended bellies or sunken cheeks. God has arranged for salvation on the basis of no contests at all: not in singing, not in cooking, not in starvingnot even, I might add, in deportment. He simply encourages a bit of togetherness when we commemorate the cancellation of such eternal gong shows.

Its still ridiculous. We make a rule not to have meat on Ash Wednesday, right? So then, instead of eating up the half-pound of old chopped beef in the fridge, we have lobster bisque in honor of the worlds miseries. Thats okay, huh?

Your arguments strike home with all the precision of a cart full of custard pies pushed over a cliff. To begin with, you are eating plain tomato soup, not lobster bisque. I would be flattered if I believed you actually thought it was lobster; but in fact, I suspect this is only another of your red herrings.