The Hemingway Cookbook (13 page)

The Hemingways, with their infant son John (nicknamed Bumby), first arrived in Schruns just before Christmas 1924. At the suggestion of friend and painter Bertram Hartman, they rented two rooms at the Hotel Taube, a family-style inn run by Paul Nels. With their Paris apartment sublet and an exchange rate of 70,000 Austrian kronen to the dollar, they could afford to escape dreary wintertime Paris and spend the entire season skiing and sledding and enjoying the crisp and clear quality of life in the mountains. Early on, Ernest worked on his stories while Hadley knitted or practiced her piano and Bumby played with the local children in the Kinderhaus behind the hotel. Ernest was happily immersed in the local color, emulating the locals and letting his thick black beard grow in for the first time. He took great pleasure in hearing that the locals were calling him “the black, kirsch-drinking Christ,” a testament to the presence that he and his appetites carved out in the mountain valley.

Hemingway consumed his newfound lifestyle voraciously, participating in illegal poker games with the chief of police and climbing the steep trail at the head of the valley to Madlener Haus or Wiesbadener-Hut, the Alpine Club stations from which they could ski back down across virgin
slopes of freshly fallen powder. His hunger for the local food and drink matched his appetite for this new life.

In the warmth of the wood-planked bar of the Taube, Ernest enjoyed their selection of 36 kinds of beer, good and cheap wine, schnapps distilled from mountain gentian, and a locally made kirsch, which quickly became his favorite. Frau Nels ran the kitchen and prepared excellent, hearty meals:

We were always hungry and every meal time was a great event. We drank light or dark beer and new wines and wines that were a year old sometimes. The white wines were the best. For other drinks there was kirsch made in the valley and Enzian
Schnapps
distilled from mountain gentian. Sometimes for dinner there would be jugged hare with a rich red wine sauce, and sometimes venison with chestnut sauce. We would drink red wine with these even though it was more expensive than white wine, and the very best cost twenty cents a liter. Ordinary red wine was much cheaper and we packed it up in kegs to the Madlener-Haus.
³³

The Hotel Taube remains much as Hemingway found it in the 1920s, with big rooms and large beds with good blankets. While Ernest may have enjoyed his venison served with a chestnut sauce, the local specialty is
Hirschfilet in Wacholderrahmsauce
, venison fillet or cutlets in a juniper cream sauce. At the Taube, you may accompany your venison with the traditional red cabbage and potato croquettes. The author would like to thank Walter Nels, son of Paul Nels and the current proprietor of the Hotel Taube, for his assistance in developing these recipes for this book.

THE MENU

Dinner at the Hotel Taube

Venison in Juniper Cream Sauce
Red Cabbage
Potato Croquettes

Hotel Taube in Schruns, Austria.

Venison in Juniper Cream Sauce
(Hirschfilet in Wacholderrahmsauce)

4
SERVINGS

1 pound venison, pork, or beef bones, cut up

2 slices of bacon, or lard for frying

1 onion, coarsely chopped

1 carrot, chopped

1 rib celery, chopped

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon tomato paste

½ cup red wine

3½ cups beef broth

24 juniper berries, crushed

1 piece orange rind

1 piece lemon rind

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1 bay leaf

4 peppercorns

4 1½-inch slices of venison fillet, or venison cutlets

4 thin rashers of bacon or strips of fatty bacon

Salt

Pepper

Oil and butter for frying

½ cup heavy cream

Preheat the oven to 400° F
.

In a large, heatproof casserole, roast the bones until brown, about 30 minutes. Remove the casserole from the oven and place over medium heat. Add the bacon and vegetables and saute for a few minutes. Stir in the flour and tomato paste and cook, stirring frequently, for 5 minutes, until the mixture takes on a nice brown color. Add the wine, broth, half the crushed berries, lemon and orange rind, thyme, and bay leaf. Reduce heat to a simmer and cover. Cook for 1 hour, stirring frequently. After 45 minutes, add the peppercorns to the sauce and begin cooking the venison.

Wrap each cutlet in a rasher of bacon and secure with a skewer. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Heat oil and butter in a skillet over high heat. Sear the cutlets for 1 minute on each side. Place the cutlets on a warm serving platter and remove skewers. Deglaze the skillet with a little red wine, scraping up any bits stuck to the skillet. Reduce the heat to medium. When the sauce is finished, strain through a fine sieve and season with salt and pepper to taste. Pour the sauce into the skillet. Add the remaining crushed berries and cream. When hot, but not yet boiling, pour the sauce over the cutlets and serve.

Red Cabbage
(Rotweinkraut)

4
TO
6
SERVINGS

1 head red cabbage

½ cup red wine

Juice of ½ lemon

2 tablespoons butter

1 onion, finely chopped

2 tablespoons sugar

½ cup beef broth

1 teaspoon caraway seeds, crushed

1 apple, cored, peeled, and chopped

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

Salt

Pepper

Begin preparation the night before. Clean the cabbage. Remove the stem and any imperfect leaves. Cut into fine strips. Marinate the cabbage overnight in the red wine and lemon juice.

The following day, melt the butter in a large casserole. When hot, add the onion and saute briefly. Add the sugar and cook, stirring often, until caramelized. Add the cabbage, broth, and caraway. Lower the heat, cover, and cook for 45 minutes. After 30 minutes, add the chopped apple. Just before serving, stir together the flour with 2 tablespoons water in a cup and add to the cabbage to thicken. When thickened, season with salt and pepper to taste and serve.

Potato Croquettes
(Kartoffelkroketten)

18
TO
24
CROQUETTES

5-6 medium potatoes

1 egg yolk

2 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon salt

½ teaspoon nutmeg

1½-2 cups all-purpose flour, or more as needed

2 large eggs, beaten with 1 tablespoon water

1 cup breadcrumbs

Vegetable oil, for deep-frying, to 1-inch depth

Boil the potatoes, unpeeled, in salted water for about 20 minutes, or until tender. Drain, peel, and purée in a food mill, or pass through a ricer. Add egg yolk and butter to potatoes and mix thoroughly. Add salt and nutmeg, using more or less to taste. Add flour to the potato mixture, a few tablespoons at a time, until you can form the potatoes into small, firm sausage-shaped or round croquettes. Dip each croquette into the egg-water mixture, then coat with breadcrumbs.

Heat the oil until hot (about 375° F). Add the croquettes, a few at a time, and fry until golden brown. Remove from the oil and drain on brown paper or paper towels.

The Hemingways returned to Schruns the following winter. Ernest worked as hard as he ever had to edit the manuscript about bullfighting and Paris that he had written in six weeks earlier that year. In August 1926, he sent the proofs of his first novel to Max Perkins at Scribner’s. The dedication to his wife and son read: This book is for Hadley and for John Hadley Nicanor.

These were bittersweet words for Hemingway, for his marriage to Hadley was all but finished in the fall of 1926. Ernest had fallen in love with Pauline Pfeiffer, who came from Piggott, Arkansas to work for the Paris edition of
Vogue
and, as some would suggest, to find the right husband. In October, 1926, Scribner’s published
The Sun Also Rises
, its author poised at the brink of a new marriage and yet another new life.

The Sun Also Bises

In the summer of 1925 Ernest began writing what started as a tribute to matador Cayetano Ordonez and the bullfights of which he was quickly becoming an aficionado. As his writing flourished, the focus of the story expanded well beyond the bullring to include the equally compelling spectacle of Parisian cafe life and its destitute band of roving drunkards. “I’m writing a novel full of plot and drama,” he told Kitty Cannell, who would appear as Frances Clyne in the novel. “He gestured ahead towards Harold [Loeb] and Bill [Smith]. ‘I’m tearing those bastards apart,’ he said. ‘I’m putting everyone in it.’”
³⁴

He would, indeed, put everyone in it, capturing the decadent, barren soul of Montparnasse and expatriate Paris.
The Sun Also Rises
became one of the most famous (and infamous)
romans a clef
of all time. As intriguing as his readers found his fiction, the real people upon whom it was based were not quite as pleased. Jimmie Charters, wellknown barman of the Dingo Bar, recalled in his memoirs the displeasure of the unwitting protagonists, who were described as “six characters in search of an author—with a gun!”
³⁵

The people are all gone now. What remains is Paris, Hemingway’s Paris, complete with cafes, book stalls, dusk-tipped horse-chestnut trees, and smoke-filled bars. Hemingway also included a meal at the Rendezvous-des-Mariniers on the He St. Louis, a meal that Suzanne Rodriguez-Hunter, in her book
Found Meals of the Lost Generation
, claims “may well be the most famous
meal of the decade.”
³⁶
Jake Barnes and Bill Gorton—based in part on Hemingway and his childhood friend Bill Smith—dine at the Rendezvous, which had already lost its dingy charm as a hangout for the literary set and had been invaded by “too many compatriots.”
³⁷
In
Where Paris Dines
, Julian Street notes that Americans found this “shabby little eating place … invaluable for purposes of entertaining. ‘Tonight,’ you would remark casually to your visitors, ‘I’ll take you to a queer little place, very French.’”
³⁸

We ate dinner at Madame Lecomte’s restaurant on the far side of the island. It was crowded with Americans and we had to stand up and wait for a place. Some one had put it in the American Women’s Club list as a quaint restaurant on the Paris quais as yet untouched by Americans, so we had to wait forty-five minutes for a table. Bill had eaten at the restaurant in 1918, right after the armistice, and Madame Lecomte made a great fuss over seeing him.

“Doesn’t get us a table, though,” Bill said….

We had a good meal, a roast chicken, new green beans, mashed potatoes, a salad, and some applepie and cheese…. After the coffee and
a fine
we got the bill, chalked up the same as ever on a slate, that was doubtless one of the “quaint” features, paid it, shook hands, and went out….

The river was dark and a bateau mouche went by, all bright with lights, going fast and quiet up and out of sight under the bridge. Down the river was Notre Dame squatting against the night sky. We crossed to the left bank of the Seine by the wooden foot-bridge from the Quai de Bethune, and stopped on the bridge and looked down the river at Notre Dame. Standing on the bridge the island looked dark, the houses were high against the sky, and the trees were shadows.

“It’s pretty grand,” Bill said. “God, I love to get back.”
³⁹

THE MENU

Dinner at Madame Lecomte’s Au
Rendezvous des Mariniers

Roast Chicken
New Green Beans
Mashed Potatoes
Salad
Apple Pie and Cheese
Coffee
Fine (Cognac)