Lyons - Gluttony: more is more

GLUTTONY:

More is More

Welcome to this celebration of eating with gusto. The party began when cave dwellers toppled a very big wooly mammoth and then picked third helpings of berries.

Nan Lyons missed that first feast but she serves up delicious tidbits about the worlds most lavish banquets and dedicated dinersall accompanied by some of the best dining art the world has to offer.

The author finds soul mates for anyone who has ever polished off a midnight pint of ice cream. If you crave innocent treats, you're in the good company of Robert Redford who lives for Oreos. If you delight in the unexpected, youll enjoy meeting the original Roman feast-maestro, Marcus Apicius.

And if you like to cook, you can whip up a luscious facsimile of Apicius asparagus omelet. This recipe is one of over two dozen adapted for Gluttony by a separate dream-cuisine team. The Carte Blanche recipes include Baked Foie Gras La Varenne, Escoffiers Lobster Newburg and gilded chocolate cognac truffles.

Yes, you can eat gold, and Nan Lyons writes entertainingly of those who have.

Gluttony: More is More gives you a seat at several fine and hilarious tables. Comeand invite a guest.

Novelist Nan Lyons is co-author of Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? and Champagne Blues. Ms. Lyons, who lives in New York, writes luxury travel guides and contributes to Bon Appetit and other magazines.

Cover and book design by Kathleen Herlihy-Paoli

www.redrockpress.com

G LUTTONY

M ORE IS M ORE

Gluttony

M ORE IS M ORE

Copyright 1999, by Red Rock Press

ISBN: 978-1-9331765-6-7

Published by Red Rock Press

New York, New York

U.S.A.

www.redrockpress.com

This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by any means, without the written permission of Red Rock Press.

Cover art: Colored, large detail of a Gustave Dor (1832-1883) woodcut of Gargantua, for a privately printed volume, The Works of Rabelais.

Back cover art: Les Noces Alsaciennes by Paul Kaufmann From Les Fastes de Bacchus et Comus by G. Oberle, New York Academy of Medicine Library.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Sylvia Carter, E. Clarke Reilly and Bernadette Wheeler for creating, compiling, translating, adapting, and testing the Carte Blanche recipes expressly for Gluttony: More is More.

Every reasonable effort has been made to trace and credit the ownership of any copyright-protected material appearing in this book. Any errors are inadvertent and will be corrected in subsequent editions if the publisher is notified of the mistake.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CARTE BLANCHE RECIPES

Edited by Sylvia Carter & E.Clarke Reilly

R EVEL M AKERS

O PULENT O PENERS

S ENSATIONAL S OUPS

E XCELLENT E NTREES

S CANDALOUS S IDE D ISHES

D IE - FOR D ESSERTS

O VER THE T OP

H ere we stand, on the threshold of a whole new century in which the joys of excess may prove to be even more unrestrained, not to mention more creative, than ever before. The new millennium brings with it the heady possibility of leaving the sins of the past thousand years behind and trading up to a whole new standard of deliciously sinful behavior. If we are to be thrust into a new age filled with even more insatiable appetites and greater self-indulgence, now might be the perfect time to examine more closely the most comforting of the Seven Deadly Sins, gluttony.

Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we shall die.
I SAIAH 22:13

F ORBIDDEN F RUIT S ALAD

L ong after the Old Testament was written, theologians may have labeled Eves desire for that infamous apple of her eye Original Sin, but any card-carrying food fanatic will recognize at once what her problem was. Temptation, in Eves case, was that most succulent of apples, touted by that cheeky serpent as simply irresistible.

Esau was even more emotional when it came to dealing with his food fantasies. He was so driven by his hunger that he bartered away his birthright for a bowl of pottage. Or maybe he was just in the mood for a mess of lentils.

The interpretation of sin in the old days was definitely in the eyes of the beholder. If the beholder happened to be the Church, then sin was characterized as anything that took one away from the dedicated worship of God.

In the 600s, the Koran, the sacred book of Islam, offered: Children of Adam, put your minds and bodies in a state of tidiness at every time and place of worship, and eat and drink but be not immoderate. (7:32)

All in all, gluttony, or gorging oneself into a sublime state of bliss, was a spiritual breach of the contract to worship God above all else. Put that in your Peking Duck and smoke it.

Summer, 1563, by Giusseppe Arcimboldo

K UNSTHISTORISCHES M USEUM, V IENNA

V EXATIONAL

Im vexed as a stinging nettle
By cowards waving flags with mettle;
By hunting hawks in sorry fettle,
By skimpy meat in a mammoth kettle.
I hate by good St. Martins sign,
A pint of water drowning in my wine!
Monk of Montaudon, circa 1200

T HE B RITISH L IBRARY

D EPRIVE AND C ONQUER

I n the 1200s, Thomas Aquinas, in his most famous theological work, Summa Theologica, expanded and refined the ground rules for understanding the meaning of Christian doctrine. Heading the list of ways errant members of the Church found to exclude God from their lives was a short and, by todays standards, seemingly harmless clutch of transgressions, which became known as the Seven Deadly Sins. At the very top was Vainglory, the sin of pride, from which he believed the other sins such as lust, envy and anger were born. Greed, gluttony, sloth, he considered small potatoes.