Tender at the Bone - Chicken Liver Pâté

Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table

By Ruth Reichl

289 pages, Random House, 1998

Photo by Aurélie Jouan

Ruth Reichl’s memoir Tender at the Bone ranks among my very favourite food memoirs, and among my favourite books. For many reasons. For one thing, it’s beautifully written in the kind of voice that makes me wish I were friends with the author. For another, it superbly describes the way food can shape the everyday lives and relationships of those who open themselves to it. There are many objective reasons to like this book (inasmuch as there is such a thing as objectivity in the reading experience). But many of the reasons I loved it are actually intensely personal.

Before I continue, you may notice that the photos in this post look much, much better than usual. This is because a friend of mine, the very talented Aurélie Jouan, was kind enough to come over for a photo shoot. I’m so grateful to her, especially since I made her shoot pâté, which is perhaps the least photogenic dish ever. And she still managed to make it look good! You can check out her work at www.aureliejouan.com.

I have not always been interested in food. Far from it. When I was in my early twenties and living alone, I was buying premade quiches, microwaveable dinners and Chinese takeout with the rest of my peers. My interest in food came later, when I discovered the pleasures of cooking for my roommate and friends, and later for my family. Even today, I can’t claim to be really up-to-date on food culture: I don’t rush to buy the latest Saveur or Lucky Peach, I forget chefs’ names as soon as I learn them, and I haven’t been to a trendy restaurant in years. And yet, strangely enough, Ruth Reichl has practically always been in my life. Most of you know her as the former editor-in-chief of the now defunct Gourmet Magazine, or as the former restaurant critic for the New York Times. To me, she is a voice from my childhood.

When we lived in New York the first time around, my Dad would drive me to school in the morning. He always had the radio on, and we regularly heard Ruth Reichl giving her restaurant review. This was strange, when I think back on it, because my Dad is the polar opposite of a gourmet; most likely he just left the radio on while waiting for the news to come on. Discovering that there was such a profession as a food critic must have made a striking impression on me, or maybe it was just that my Dad liked to say “Ah, here’s Ruth Reichl” in a fake New York accent (even now, I have trouble calling her solely by her last name – that’s how deeply engraved her alliterative name is in my memory). Whatever the reason, she stuck with us. To this day, my Dad still remembers the time she concluded her review by saying that, having gone to a restaurant for lunch, she returned that very same day for dinner. And she was no doubt the reason I wrote my very first (and, for a long time, only) restaurant review at the tender age of eight.

Photo by Aurélie Jouan

That was as far as it went, but it was enough to prompt me to buy Tender at the Bone. It’s a partial memoir, where Reichl traces the path that led her along her discovery of food, and the people and places that shaped her outlook. It’s gorgeously written, bravely intimate, and perfectly balanced. A must read for food lovers.

I knew I was in for a treat when Reichl opens with anecdotes about her mother, whom she describes as “taste-blind and unafraid of rot.” This particular combination of traits led Mrs. Reichl to serve spoiled food to many guests over the years, as young Ruth took it upon herself to “keep Mom from killing anyone who came to dinner.” It also resulted in some interesting culinary improvisations:

She liked to brag about “Everything Stew,” a dish invented while she was concocting a casserole out of a two-week-old turkey carcass. […] She put the turkey and a half can of mushroom soup into the pot. Then she began rummaging around in the refrigerator. She found some leftover broccoli and added that. A few carrots went in, and then a half carton of sour cream. In a hurry, as usual, she added green beans and cranberry sauce. And then, somehow, half an apple pie slipped into the dish. Mom looked momentarily horrified. Then she shrugged and said, “Who knows? Maybe it will be good.” And she began throwing everything in the refrigerator in along with it – leftover pâté, some cheese ends, a few squishy tomatoes.

This passage had me laughing, because my grandmother used to do the same thing (she is thankfully still alive, but is now in a retirement home and no longer cooks). Except she didn’t make “Everything Stew,” she made “Everything Soup.” My father used to deplore the fact that she would ruin perfectly good canned soups by adding whatever was in her refrigerator at the time. “But that’s what makes my soups special,” she would reply, to which my Dad would roll his eyes. Some people are geniuses at recycling old food: my father-in-law, for example, can turn old veggies, stale bread and insipid cheese into a delicious gratin. My grandmother… is a better gardener than cook, let’s leave it at that. A product of her time, she also refused to throw any food out, letting leftovers rot in her fridge until she found the time to make a soup to use them in. Whenever my Dad and his siblings came to visit, they would raid the fridge and throw out anything suspicious, much to her dismay.

Reading on, I discovered that Ruth Reichl and I had more in common than a culinarily dangerous relative. At one point, she recounts the time she spent in Montreal, where I lived for many years, and I kept my eyes open for any places I might recognize. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that she attended the same French high school I graduated from. Reading her description of the school as it stood fifty years ago was an uncanny experience.

Photo by Aurélie Jouan

Beyond these coincidences which appealed to me personally, Tender at the Bone is not just a good food book. It’s a riveting memoir by someone who has led a very interesting life so far - this despite the fact that she barely touches upon her life as a food critic (which she does in another memoir, Garlic and Sapphires). Or rather, she manages to make her life interesting to the reader. Whether she’s working as a social worker in 1960’s New York, travelling to North Africa, or living on a commune in California, Ruth Reichl tells her story in a way that makes the characters around her sparkle with life, and brings out the beauty, humour, and heartache of her relationships with them. Food is always present, but sometimes it slips away into the background, and resurfaces in time to help make sense of everything. It’s the kind of book I was sincerely sorry to finish.

In the end, though, it all comes back to Ruth Reichl’s relationship with her mother, who struggled with manic depression. And this is probably where this book hit me hardest. There were scenes that made me truly cringe, and at the same time I couldn’t stop reading, propelled by a kind of morbid fascination. By the end, I just wanted to give Ruth Reichl a cookie and a hug, and tell her it was all right – or maybe I wanted her to tell me that, I’m not sure. It feels strange to write this about the food critic I used to listen to on the radio, but I felt as if I had met a kindred spirit. That’s the kind of book this is.

Photo by Aurélie Jouan

There are all kinds of recipes included in the book. There are brownies, and devil’s food cake, and fried chicken, and other delicious, popular food. And what did I go and choose to make? Pâté. (Again, apologies to my photographer, Aurélie.)

What can I say, I love pâté. I always have. Strangely enough, I’m not a huge fan of liver in itself: I’ll eat it, but I won’t order it. But mash it up with some other stuff and spread it on toast, and I’ll scarf it down and ask for seconds.

This is a very simple pâté recipe that requires nothing more than a skillet and a wooden spoon (and a knife to chop things up, of course). The texture is coarse, rather than creamy, but the strong taste of the chicken livers is tempered by the anchovies and lemon. It makes for a lunch with character.

I had to double the recipe because I had too many chicken livers, but the result was quite good nevertheless. Make sure to chop up your ingredients very finely

Photo by Aurélie Jouan

Milton’s Pâté

Adapted from Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone

Serves 6 as an appetizer or light lunch

3 tbsp olive oil

One small onion, minced

One clove garlic, minced

6 anchovies, cut into pieces

One pound (500g) chicken livers, cleaned

1/2 cup (120 ml) white wine

4 sprigs flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped

Zest of one lemon, grated

2 tbsp capers in vinegar, minced

Salt

Pepper

2 tsp lemon juice

Heat oil over low-medium heat and cook the onion and garlic until tender. Add anchovies and stir, mashing them. Add chicken livers and continue cooking until they lose their reddish hue, mashing with a fork or a wooden spoon as they cook. Add wine, lemon zest and parsley and cook until liquid has evaporated, mashing to obtain the texture of a coarse pâté. Stir in capers and cook for one more minute. Stir in lemon juice and adjust seasoning.

Serve on toast, brushed with olive oil and garlic if you wish.