IMMOVEABLE FEAST and Inside John Baxter’s Kitchen
     by By John Baxter

Click here to see Video Interview with John Baxter and Terrance Gelenter.

Ernest Hemingway called Paris "a moveable feast" – a city ready to embrace you at any time in your life when you feel able to return its embrace. For Los Angeles-based film critic John Baxter, that moment came when he fell in love with the only French woman who can’t cook and impulsively moved to Paris to marry her. As a test of his love, his in-laws charged him with cooking the next Christmas banquet—for eighteen people in their ancestral family home. And he has been dong it ever since.

As a bon vivant with an insider’s perspective on the City of Light he is regularly sought out for advice on the city’s best markets, restaurants, cheese shops and boulangeries-questions that lead to lengthy, anecdote-filled riffs but the question that silences him is “Where can I get a Christmas dinner in Paris?” The answer: almost impossible.

That set him to thinking about his own Paris Christmases. IMMOVEABLE FEAST recalls with great joy his growth from a nearly mute English-speaking diner to Père Noel with an apron as he passionately plans and prepares sumptuous annual feast after feast. This perfect stocking stuffer will inspire you to save at least one American turkey from extinction.

A regular at Paris street markets John has also acquired a taste for the unusual (to Anglos.)

John's Tips for Preparing Unusual Greenmarket Finds

Not long ago, the lady next in line at the fruit and vegetable vendor in our local market noted me buying some fresh zucchini flowers and asked "What do you do with those, actually?"

I explained that I stuffed them with a farce of crab or minced pork, dipped them in a light batter, and fried them crisp. But it reminded me that one of the drawbacks of a seasonal cuisine, where one cooks whatever's fresh in the market that day, is a tendency to skip the unfamiliar and select something for which you already have a recipe, and you know your family or guests will like.

Here are some of my favourite oddities, and the way I like to cook (or at least eat) them.

   1. Oursins. Sea urchins.  Surrealist painter Salvador Dali claimed he prepared these according to an old Catalan recipe, with chocolate. It supposedly gave him wonderful dreams. I prefer to slice off the top, scrape out the little buds of violet roe that cling to the interior, and simply spread them on bread. The flavor also goes well with eggs, and the chef at La Petite Cour on Rue Mabillon serves them with creamy scrambled egg, and the roe arranged on top.
  
2. Escargots. A commonplace of French menus, snails are almost invariably served in their shells, oozing melted butter flavoured with garlic and parsley. Rather than risk grease strains down my shirt, I prefer the recipe used at the Bon St Pourçain on Rue Servandoni. The chef serves them out of their shells, in a special dish with a dozen wells, each just big enough for one snail. His sauce uses butter and roughly chopped garlic, but with a hint of anise-flavoured pastis.
  
3. Riz-de-Veau. Sweetbreads. American food markets tiptoe round what the British call "offal", using euphemisms like "variety meats". Though I shy away from testicles, I enjoy most organs, with a preference for kidneys, calves' liver and the thymus gland of the milk-fed calf, aka riz-de-veau or sweetbreads. Their texture is less chewy than kidney but meatier than liver, and the flavor lends itself to delicate, sweeter accompaniments than its more robust relatives. I toss them in seasoned flour and sauté them in unsalted butter with a few shelled walnuts, and make a sauce of the pan juices deglazed with white wine or Charentaise pineau, a sweet mixture of fermented grape juice and cognac.
  
4. Trompettes de Mort. Black chanterelles, or wood mushrooms. Literally "Trumpets of Death", these small fluted horn-shaped relatives of the more familiar girolle turn up in the early autumn. They often remain unbought, so growers combine them with undersized girolles, cepes and other wood mushrooms, dry or freeze them, and market the mix as Melange Forestier. I like them lightly sautéed and mixed with pasta as an accompaniment to a ragout of some rich gamey meat, like sanglier – wild boar.
  
5. Oreille de porc. Pig's Ear.  The Chicago stockyards used to boast: "We use every part of the pig except the squeal". French charcutiers – pork butchers – follow this rule, with particular attention to the head. After being steamed tender, the cheek meat is chopped fine, and embedded in aspic to make tete de porc, while the snout or museau is sliced thinly and served chilled in vinaigrette as an appetizer. The ears are boiled until the meat is limp, gelatinous and almost transparent. Them they're split, stuffed with a spicy pork mixture, quickly deep fried in an egg-white batter, and served with Sauce Ravigote, a light meaty veloute flavored with vinegar, chopped onions, gherkins and fresh herbs.