Coo coo ca-choo, Île d'Yeu. Our nation turns its lonely eyes to vous.
I'm sure the island has a few spare rooms for lease?
And don't even get me started on how terrified this child of the 70s remains when I encounter even the slightest blemish in a canned good. "Is that a bulge? Oh, god, I'm gonna die."
I really appreciate your ability to take something awful (the fascism we're living through in real time) and using it to offer us something comforting: The world needs *more* Vichyssoise recipes at this time! Vichyssoise is delicious!
Vichy was a cross between a bourgeois Baden-2 and a battered wife. They just didn’t want to get reminded of those days. Or so it was in the 1970s. I did my apprenticeship at their revitalization attempt at tourism: La Rotonde du Lac. Oddly enough the kitchen was amazing: designed by Raymond Oliver.
The irony of Diat naming the soup after Vichy for its spa-town cachet only for it to become forever linked to collaboration is genuinely tragic. What gets me is how a culinary creation born from international cooperation (French chef, Swiss hotelier, American kitchen) got tangled in such darkness. I grew up with my grandmother making a similar leek-potato soup and never knew this whole backstory til now, makes me appreciate potage Parmentier way more.
My father, a US diplomat and WWII veteran would serve chilled Avgolimono with avocado garnish at dinners where a chilled soup would be de rigueur rather than Vichyssoise.
He was quite something. On retirement in 1980, he wrote food columns for the St Augustine Record and the yacht club. I inherited over 10,000 cookbooks, his cooking journals, weekly letters home beginning in 1941 and hundreds of photos. He got Dinah Shore to interview on WHRB as a student. We had people like Arthur Ashe, Shirley Temple Black and Paul Bowles to dinner. Even though we had a cook, he did the cooking for all the diplomatic functions at our house. Do NOT store your books in a coastal Florida house with no air conditioning.
There are two women of La Résistance whose work I find fascinating: Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt (biography: Empress of the Nile) and Marie-Madeleine Fourcade (biography: Madame Fourcade’s Secret War). I suspect both women supped on potage Parmentier.
The release of your recipe for Nuremburgers can’t come soon enough.
It is a shame that the soup is ideologically tainted by its name because it sounds completely delicious. I may even try making it. And let us hope the madness will somehow come to an end soon.
I agree. It’s hard to find the language to adequately express my horror at what is going on in the US, and my fear at what may be attempted here, in Canada. At this point can anyone really fail to recognize that we are witnessing Fascism in real time?
On a lighter note, chilled potage Parmentier sounds much more appetizing. And thank you for the historical insight by way of soup recipe.
It's so unfair that such a good soup is tied (however tenuously) to such awfulness. But Diat had to go and name it for a playground of the very rich and the very rich are a class of people who seem disproportionately attracted to Fascism.
That the nineteen (19!!!!) wealthiest U.S. citizens could use all their wealth to buy 10% of a year's output by the rest of us - but they will not. Trickle down is as foul as it sounds. Perhaps time to serve them a potful of this soup, boiling. Add extra oil.
I'm feeling the same, and worse tonight, as I'm sure you are too. Bring in army ants.
Coo coo ca-choo, Île d'Yeu. Our nation turns its lonely eyes to vous.
I'm sure the island has a few spare rooms for lease?
And don't even get me started on how terrified this child of the 70s remains when I encounter even the slightest blemish in a canned good. "Is that a bulge? Oh, god, I'm gonna die."
I really appreciate your ability to take something awful (the fascism we're living through in real time) and using it to offer us something comforting: The world needs *more* Vichyssoise recipes at this time! Vichyssoise is delicious!
I've read that the Île d'Yeu has a museum with Pétain's things in it, but they don't advertise because he still has quite a few fascist fans.
Vichy was a cross between a bourgeois Baden-2 and a battered wife. They just didn’t want to get reminded of those days. Or so it was in the 1970s. I did my apprenticeship at their revitalization attempt at tourism: La Rotonde du Lac. Oddly enough the kitchen was amazing: designed by Raymond Oliver.
You have lived quite the life, MSN! I would seriously be interested in reading your memoirs.
My brother once visited the Hall des Sources and drank so much Vichy water that he threw up.
P.S. Your opening sentence is marvelous.
I suppose one could consider this soup a form of cold comfort.
That was nearly the subtitle!
Do The Sorrel and the Pity next.
I was thinking Playing for Thyme.
The irony of Diat naming the soup after Vichy for its spa-town cachet only for it to become forever linked to collaboration is genuinely tragic. What gets me is how a culinary creation born from international cooperation (French chef, Swiss hotelier, American kitchen) got tangled in such darkness. I grew up with my grandmother making a similar leek-potato soup and never knew this whole backstory til now, makes me appreciate potage Parmentier way more.
It definitely make me appreciate potage Parmentier more, too.
I think the "how" is more or less just very bad luck.
“Backpfeifengesicht” — the word I’ve been missing my entire life!
Right? The Germans are SO GOOD at this type of thing.
My father, a US diplomat and WWII veteran would serve chilled Avgolimono with avocado garnish at dinners where a chilled soup would be de rigueur rather than Vichyssoise.
Avgolemono is one of my most favorite soups of all! And what a marvelous idea. Also, your father sounds wonderful.
He was quite something. On retirement in 1980, he wrote food columns for the St Augustine Record and the yacht club. I inherited over 10,000 cookbooks, his cooking journals, weekly letters home beginning in 1941 and hundreds of photos. He got Dinah Shore to interview on WHRB as a student. We had people like Arthur Ashe, Shirley Temple Black and Paul Bowles to dinner. Even though we had a cook, he did the cooking for all the diplomatic functions at our house. Do NOT store your books in a coastal Florida house with no air conditioning.
That man had a LIFE!
And I solemnly promise not to store cookbooks anywhere near the state of Florida.
There are two women of La Résistance whose work I find fascinating: Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt (biography: Empress of the Nile) and Marie-Madeleine Fourcade (biography: Madame Fourcade’s Secret War). I suspect both women supped on potage Parmentier.
The release of your recipe for Nuremburgers can’t come soon enough.
Ooh! The Louvre had a really marvelous exhibit about how they hid their treasures from the Nazis. It was fascinating.
And, no, the day that recipe is published cannot come soon enough.
It is a shame that the soup is ideologically tainted by its name because it sounds completely delicious. I may even try making it. And let us hope the madness will somehow come to an end soon.
I agree. It’s hard to find the language to adequately express my horror at what is going on in the US, and my fear at what may be attempted here, in Canada. At this point can anyone really fail to recognize that we are witnessing Fascism in real time?
On a lighter note, chilled potage Parmentier sounds much more appetizing. And thank you for the historical insight by way of soup recipe.
It's so unfair that such a good soup is tied (however tenuously) to such awfulness. But Diat had to go and name it for a playground of the very rich and the very rich are a class of people who seem disproportionately attracted to Fascism.
That the nineteen (19!!!!) wealthiest U.S. citizens could use all their wealth to buy 10% of a year's output by the rest of us - but they will not. Trickle down is as foul as it sounds. Perhaps time to serve them a potful of this soup, boiling. Add extra oil.
I'm feeling the same, and worse tonight, as I'm sure you are too. Bring in army ants.
If I could get a hold of some hemlock, I might like to use as a garnish instead of chive.
That day cannot come soon enough, Jane.
Maybe we should just call it chilled potage Parmentier?