The Hemingway Cookbook (25 page)

… the quail country made him remember him as he was when Nick was a boy and he was very grateful to him for two things: fishing and shooting. His father was as sound on those two things as he was unsound on sex, for instance, and Nick was glad that it had been that way; for some one has to give you your first gun or the opportunity to get it and use it, and you have to live where there is game or fish if you are to learn about them, and now, at thirty-eight, he loved to fish and to shoot exactly as much as when he first had gone with his father.
¹

As with all of his great passions—the bullfights, fishing for trout or marlin, or writing well—the heightened reality of the hunt awakened in Ernest that voracious appetite for food and drink. It has been noted that his appetite was only truly piqued while hunting or fishing for marlin. We find, particularly in writing about his safaris in East Africa, detailed and enthusiastic accounts of the exotic meals and potent drinks that provided sustenance for the hunters. His hunting adventures formed in large part the legend of Hemingway that remains today. From the Kapiti Plains of East Africa to the mountains of Wyoming and Idaho, as we partake of the foods and drinks of the hunt, replete with images of great successes and mortal failures, we may yet again participate that much more fully in the Hemingway legend. Our first stop is Kenya, where Ernest and Pauline arrived in 1933 for Hemingway’s first major safari.

African Safari

Hemingway went on two major safaris to East Africa. The first, in 1933-34, resulted in
The Green Hills of Africa
, an ambitious effort at re-creating reality from the young and newly famous writer, as well as two of his most memorable short stories, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” The second safari, in 1953-54, ended with serious internal injuries and a fractured skull, the result of not one, but two, plane crashes.

In November 1933, Ernest and Pauline sailed from Marseilles for Mombasa, Kenya. Financed with $25,000 from Pauline’s Uncle Gus, the Hemingways hunted for seven weeks in the Great Rift Valley and the Serengeti Plain of Tanganyika. They were joined by Key West friend Charles Thompson and the English hunter Philip Percival, who once hunted with Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt. They were also joined briefly by Baron Bror von Blixen, the director of Tanganyika Guides, Ltd., who, along with Percival, served as models for Wilson in “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.”

The drama and danger of the safari brought Hemingway in touch with his own struggles with cowardice and courage. He discovered that by having confronted the former he could eventually live and hunt and work firmly rooted in the latter.
²
The safari also brought out his volatile, competitive spirit, as the less experienced Thompson continually bettered Hemingway with larger kills.

The details of their safari would eventually make it into Hemingway’s fiction. The finest piece to come of the early safari and one of his most intriguing short stories was “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” Based very loosely on a tale told by Percival around their campfire, Hemingway embroidered a deliciously dark and taut story. Francis and Margot Macomber, a deeply embittered couple, are on safari with their white hunter, Wilson. Francis Macomber wallows in his cowardice, confronting it when there is nothing left to lose after Margot has betrayed him. He finds his courage in the path of a wounded and charging buffalo, but Margot ends the story with “a sudden white-hot, blinding flash.”
³

FRANCIS MACOMBER’S LAST MEAL

Having bolted from a charging lion the day before, Francis must contend with the ceaseless barbs of his wife and the contemptuous silence of Wilson. Over lunch, Margot takes ample opportunity to register her distaste at her husband’s retreat:

“That’s eland he’s offering you,” Wilson said.

“They’re the big cowy things that jump like hares, aren’t they?”

“I suppose that describes them,” Wilson said.

“It’s very good meat,” Macomber said.

“Did you shoot it, Francis?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“They’re not dangerous, are they?”

“Only if they fall on you,” Wilson told her.

“I’m so glad.”

“Why not let up on the bitchery just a little, Margot,” Macomber said, cutting the eland steak and putting some mashed potato, gravy and carrot on the down-turned fork that tined through the piece of meat.
⁴

Hunter’s Safari Steak

This recipe, adapted from
The African Cookbook,
utilizes a method used by Kenyan hunters for preparing game such as eland, antelope, or zebra. If eland is not available, you may substitute veal, beef, or even buffalo
.

4
SERVINGS

2 pounds eland steaks

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons butter

Salt

Pepper

½
cup dry red wine

½
cup sweet wine

2 cloves garlic, minced

½
cup tomato sauce

1½
cups mashed potatoes

1 cup mashed sweet potatoes

Chopped parsley, for garnish

Cut the meat into 4 steaks, each about
½
inch thick. Dry the steaks with a paper towel. Heat the olive oil and butter in a large skillet just to the smoking point. Add the steaks and cook for about 3 minutes on each side, adding more oil as necessary. Season the steaks with salt and pepper to taste and set aside on a warm plate.

Keep the skillet over low heat and add the wines. Deglaze the pan by stirring the wine and scraping up any browned bits that may have stuck. Add the garlic and simmer for 2 minutes. Stir in the tomato sauce and continue to simmer until the sauce has thickened.

In a large bowl, mix together the mashed potatoes and the mashed sweet potatoes. Add salt and pepper to taste. Spread the potatoes on a large serving plate. Place the steaks on top of the potatoes and pour the sauce over the steaks. Garnish with chopped parsley and serve immediately.

The second safari needed no such fictional veil to become the thing of legend. Ernest and Mary sailed from Marseilles in 1953 to hunt again with Percival, who came out of retirement to hunt with Hemingway. Ernest once again became aggressively competitive, this time with Mario Menocal, a friend from Cuba, but the drama of their dueling was nothing when compared with the accidents that would soon befall Ernest and Mary.

At the close of the safari in January 1954, the Hemingways planned to depart from Nairobi for a vacation in the Belgian Congo. Ernest arranged a flight from Nairobi airport as a belated Christmas present for Mary. Their flight plan was circuitous, allowing them ample time to view the wonders of the African landscape from above. They flew south over the Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti Plain, over the sight of Ernest and Pauline’s 1933 safari campsite. They turned north and flew over the White Nile, eventually flying east, following the Victoria Nile to the Murchison Falls. Roy Marsh, their pilot, circled the falls three times, giving Mary a spectacular view where the river plunged in a series of cataracts toward the Sudan and Egypt. On the third pass, Marsh dived to avoid a flight of ibis in their path, striking a telegraph wire and raking the plane’s tail assembly. They crash-landed three miles south-southwest of the falls. Mary suffered two broken ribs and Ernest a shoulder sprain, but otherwise they escaped serious injury.

Ernest and Mary prepare game for the safari pot.

After a night of restless sleep by a campfire, they spotted a passing riverboat. They boarded the
Murchison
, which was rented to John Huston during the shooting of
The African Queen
, and sailed to Butiaba. Upon arrival the Hemingways discovered that local officials had searched the wreckage and found no survivors. The news had quickly got out, and the world believed that Hemingway was dead.

In the early evening of that same day, they boarded another plane at the Butiaba airstrip en route to Entebbe. Upon takeoff, after barrelling down the makeshift runway, the de Havilland Rapide 12-seater promptly stopped and burst into flames. Mary and the others escaped through a kicked-out window while Ernest used his head and injured shoulder to butt his way through the port door. He had survived yet again, but not unscathed this time. His injuries included ruptured liver, spleen, and kidney, a fractured skull resulting in loss of vision in one eye and hearing in one ear, a crushed vertebra, several sprains, and first-degree burns.

The following day the world discovered that Hemingway was alive after all. Groggy and seeing double, he met the press in relatively good humor. As if the truth were not amazing enough, the press prompted the myth that the great Hemingway had emerged from the jungle sporting a bottle of gin and a bunch of bananas. The myths and the legends spread, as did the effects of his injuries. He had out-Hemingway’d himself yet again, and the world’s appetite for the legend grew accordingly.

DINNER AFTER THE HUNT

We’ve almost come to expect such drama and adventure while keeping company with Ernest. As we learned at the Finca Vigia in Cuba, we could also expect wonderful food when Mary was around. While their post-safari accidents were pure Ernest, the food they enjoyed while hunting was inspired by Mary’s culinary enthusiasm. She recalled, in her memoirs
How It Was
, the marvelous food they ate in the bush:

N’bebia, our cook, had once cooked at the Governor’s house, and, squatting beside the battered pots around the edge of his fire, big as a Hollywood bed, he provided us with food good enough for governors or gourmets. Lunch was usually cold roast of game we had shot, with hot baked potatoes, salad, fruit and cheese. Dinner began with a rich strained soup enlivened by onion or barley and continued with such main dishes as oxtail stew, roast Tommy, roast eland, curries of wild bird we’d shot, with such extras as grated fresh coconut, bananas, chutney, and Bombay duck, saffron rice with sauteed guinea hen, or deepdish eland pie, the pie crust, rolled out on a wine box with a wine bottle, light as feathers. With our appetites constantly whetted by excitement and by walking in the fresh air, we all ate too much and my pants accordingly shrank.
⁵

A successful pheasant hunt.

Curry of Wild Bird

This recipe is based on a basic African curry dish with one important element added—bananas. Mary Hemingway would add small, sweet bananas to this dish to add a smooth, starchy consistency to the sauce. This habit may have grown out of her common practice of adding mangoes to many of her favorite recipes in Cuba
.

4
SERVINGS

¼
cup olive oil

2 onions, chopped

4 cloves garlic, chopped

1 tablespoon cumin

1 teaspoon cardamom

1 cinnamon stick

4 cloves

½
teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

1 teaspoon turmeric

1-inch piece of fresh ginger, sliced

½
cup tomato puree

½
cup chicken stock

4 pounds wild fowl such as pheasant, quail, or sandgrouse, cut up