The release of Gabriel Axel's film Babette's Feast in 1991 served as a source of joy to gastronomes the world over, for no matter what the filmic faults of the production, this was one of the first films to pay homage to the world of the culinary arts. Although many other films had been made in which the preparation and consumption of food played major roles, until Babette, gastronomy did not fare at all well in the cinema. With precious few exceptions, cooking and dining were used largely as metaphoric assaults against the grossness and hypocrisy of human appetites. It is not unfair to state that until Babette the arts of the chef came in a poor second to the crafts of the filmmaker.

In Marco Ferrari's La Grande Bouffe, the act of dining is transformed into a grotesque suicidal orgy and in Tony Richardson's Tom Jones, the consumption of food is equated with the most vulgar and carnal aspects of human behavior. John Huston's The Dead utilizes a celebratory family-style meal to symbolize the variety of unconscious tools that men and women use to hide their social inadequacies. In Long Live The Lady, Ermanno Olmi, making his usual socialistic statement, uses the preparation and serving of a grandiloquent meal to reflect and highlight the boorishness and decadence of the diners. In the shadow of such political or psychoanalytic statements food and feces are never far apart. What remains is the lingering taste of gall and it is difficult not to notice (at least from the somewhat biased point of view of the gastronome) that the logic, aesthetics and philosophy of gastronomy seem to have been either lost or set aside by most filmmakers. As to films that have gone out of their way to intentionally devastate the culinary arts, none stands out more than Peter Greenway's "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover". That the film is a masterpiece is undeniable, but if ever a film has been designed to make correlations between human greed, boorish behavior and food, it is one I have yet to see.

The Logic of Gastronomy

The logic of the gastronomy is simple. Man has five senses, and as painting appeals to sight, music to hearing, and film to a combination of these, gastronomy corresponds primarily to smell and taste. Because of this gap there are even those who speculate that the widely varying senses involved in the perception and appreciation of cinema and gastronomy make the two art forms inhospitable, one to the other.

As to philosophy, gastronomes will not hesitate to also point out that culinary creativity is the most selfless of art-forms because, by definition, its very existence demands its destruction. What the sculptor Tinguely accomplishes with his self-destroying machines is achieved by every great chef every time one of his or her dishes is brought to the table. Its function is to be consumed and thus "destroyed". Like a film after it has been seen, a great meal exists only in the mind's eye. To see the film again, however, one need only pay the price of admission ... there is no need to make the film anew. All that is required is to run the print through a projector. To relive a great meal, however, one must start from scratch. Raw materials must be obtained, stoves must be fired up and the stocks, sauces, and condiments must each start their processes afresh. Only the memories linger on.

In nearly all of the arts other than cinema, gastronomy has been well and fairly represented. Food could be no better displayed than in Watteau's Embarquement pour Cynthere, which shows l8th century courtiers picnicking, or in Manet's Dejeuner sur l'Herbe. To the lover of great food, few literary works could be more appealing than Zola's Le Ventre de Paris, Anatole France's description of the restaurant in rue Vavin where the only dish was cassoulet and the wedding feast in Madame Bovary. Poetry is marvellously represented by Chateaubriand plucking several laurel leaves at the side of Dante's grave and reflecting that they would go well with macaroni.

Unlike filmmakers, those involved with the plastic or contemplative arts (prose and poetry) have demonstrated no fear or hesitation in acknowledging the legitimacy of gastronomy as a co-equal art form. Matisse, reflecting on a superb dinner, commented that "...there is clear genius to these arts; the genius that allows for the magical transformation of raw material into something far superior to the original."

One is doubly surprised that filmmakers have not been more sympathetic to gastronomy, for both these arts (certainly more than painting or the literary endeavors) necessitate such transformations. There is the same mysterious gap between a musical scale and a Debussy prelude or a 35mm camera and a Fellini film as there is between an egg and a souffle. To further compound one's confusion as to why this gap in sympathy exists, one should also note that the basis of both gastronomy and cinema lies in a humanist vision. Serious chefs and serious filmmakers are devoted to presenting their audiences with tools with which to transcend the momentary...to become, through senses or sensibilities, something higher, something beyond.

The misunderstanding (or might it better be called a failure to close a cognitive gap) is one-way, of course. Because chefs and gastronomes rarely have any input to the world of film, the various aspects of misinterpretation lay fairly and squarely on the shoulders of the filmmakers. Filmmakers seem especially loathe to acknowledge that lives dedicated to the preparation of food need to be matched by equal dedication to its consumption. As the filmmaker cannot survive without film buffs, gastronomy has also developed a distinct subspecies - the gourmet - that individual who gives priority in all human affairs to the discriminate enjoyment of food. One calls to mind critic Sainte-Beuve who, when bemoaning how much time he had to devote to earning money, cried out "but rejoice, my little stomach. Everything I earn is yours."

Perhaps the director most consistently traitorous to the gastronomic cause is Louis Malle. In My Dinner with Andre, Malle, a known gourmet himself, subtly sacrifices his loyalty to haute cuisine to those deeper feelings he holds for the cinema. In the film two old friends meet in a fashionable restaurant, there to dine and talk about their lives. Each, in his own way is devoted to good food, but Malle intentionally makes it difficult for us to appreciate their dining experience. The two eat completely different dinners, both complemented by ill-suited wines and both made up of courses that no gourmet would consider appropriate one after the other. During the two hour ingestion of their meals it becomes painfully clear that each course has been loaded with Freudian meanings, depending on the momentary tone of the conversation. (Milk fed veal is oral; asparagus and mushrooms are phallic; chocolate mousse is anal). By using even excellent food to represent various levels of inner-tension, Malle ensures that this would be a most difficult dinner to enjoy.

Nowhere has food fared more badly than in filmic comedy. Ted Kotcheff's Who Is Killing The Great Chefs of Europe is based not so much on the refined palate of a gourmet, but on his physical and moral grotesqueness. Max (Robert Morley), the editor of a London-based gourmet magazine is eating himself to death and someone starts to kill off the chefs who are preparing the food to which he is addicted. Even though the film concedes a certain potential for beauty tocookery and dining, this potential is shattered by focusing so heavily on Max, a man who lives only to ingest huge quantities of food.Here, of course, lies one of the films major deceptions: Max's true avocation is not food, it is greed, and Max never rises above the level of a primitive carnivore, an amorphously shaped human being whose single goal is filling his stomach. As in other films, gourmandisers are mistakenly equated with gourmets.

In Stanley Donen's Charade (where Audrey Hepburn is eating constantly), we find the female parallel to Max. Even though he is fat and she thin, neither Morley nor Hepburn are gourmets in these films - they are simply hungry barbarians. Both eat not so much because they want to, but because they must. So driven are they that their insatiable appetites call to mind nothing more than the flesh-eating zombies of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. Even though Morley and Hepburn dine only on the choicest of victuals, their appetites are never far above those of the zombies who "returned from the dead to eat the living." In such films there are minimal distinctions between dining on veal Monselet, live caterpillars, beef Wellington or slightly putrified but still warm human flesh.

Juzo Itami's Tampopo is somewhat more generous in its attitude towards gastronomy. Here one finds direct references to the love of food. A philosopher, a cook and a truck driver search together to find just the correct ingredients and the ideal methods to produce noodles that will sit together comfortably with theconcepts of Zen and on the palate. Perfection and idealization are both here, as is the acknowledgement of human fallibility. In the metaphoric sense, however, food does not fare as well in the Itami film, for he presents us with might be considered a double bladed symbolism for gastronomy. On the one hand (the gangster and his girl) eating represents their fall, not only from social grace but into the perverse sensual revulsion that they feel towards themselves and the world at large. On the other hand, with Tampopo and her truck driver friends, food is given both social and cathartic functions even though its preparation is seen primarily as a means of rising into the ranks of the truly bourgeoisie. In any case, Itami robs us of our appetites, for by film's end the physical appearance of a bowl of noodles is the last thing that one could desire. Like Tampopo herself, we have been purged, partly of our sense of inferiority and completely of any trace of appetite that had made itself felt.

Babette's Feast makes a more complete break with the negativistic cinematic covenant and pays a more pure homage to the creation of great cuisine. The chef (Babette) much to be admired here, is seen as the artist who has survived harsh and unwelcoming circumstances; the preparation of the meal she has planned is treated with respect, even with a touch of awe; and the food, especially as seen and commented upon by the General, is held out for devout admiration. Here too, of course, food is metaphor, for when Isak Dinesen wrote the short story on which the film is based, she used this single superb dinner to make a host of moral observations. Here are forced exile, a brand of Puritanismso strict that it borders on the perverse, and a group of people locked into self-defeating (even self annihilating) moral codes. Although one may extract a multitude of readings from the text, at its simplest level the film is dedicated to the notion that the creation of great food is no less uplifting to the artist than to the audience. More than anything, however, Babette's Feast shatters the hypothesis that there is something inherently antithetical between film and cuisine. Sainte-Beuve would have been pleased.

Ang Lee - Eat, Drink, Man, Woman

Following not too long after Babette was Ang Lee's "Eat, Drink, Man, Woman", another tale that gives due honor to the relationships between the cook, his ingredients and his audience. Alas, with the honor comes a great deal of familial and moral confusion. Chu, the master chef in the film is considered by many to be the greatest living chef on Taiwan. In charge of the kitchens at The "Grand Hotel" in Taipei, his life revolves about cooking and his three daughters. Widowed for many years, Chu believes it is essential that the family meet at once a week to share the luxurious dinners he prepares for them. None of this is as simple as it seems however. His daughters, each of whom is trying to break away from the family home, is uncomfortable at these dinners. One of the daughters comments, for example that "We communicate by eating". In fact, the preparation and serving of food within the family is a means to avoid real interaction. Equally complex, although he will admit it only to old Wu, his sous-chef for more than thirty years, Chu has lost his sense of taste.

The film is steeped in food metaphors and illusions. Even the selection of the name of the chef, Chu, is no mere coincidence, for many of the dishes he prepares and on which his daughters dine, are those that had their roots during the period of the Chou dynasty, nearly 3,200 years ago, a period during which Chinese cuisine was said to be at its apex. Even the family problems relate to food. The strife between one daughter and the father had its roots years ago when he virtually expelled her from the kitchen and forced her to seek a "more suitable career" and another daughter, still a student, works part-time at a western fast food outlet that specializes in pizza, hamburgers and hot dogs, all of which are anathema to Chu.

Metaphors and family strife aside, this is a film that will be dear to lovers of fine food. As Axel did in "Babette's Feast", Lee pays pure homage to the creation of great cuisine. Despite his failings as a father, Chu is presented as a person much to be admired, one who has survived harsh and not always welcoming circumstances in order to perfect his art. His meals, whether prepared in the vast kitchens of the hotel or at home, are treated with enormous respect, even with a touch of awe, and held out for devout admiration. At one level, that perhaps most interesting to food lovers, the film is dedicated to the notion that the creation of great food is no less uplifting to the artist than to the audience.

From the purely culinary point of view, "Eat, Drink, Man, Woman" is a superbly orchestrated symphony in a Chinese kitchen. As "Babette's Feast" reflected the kinds of dishes prepared in the late 19th century at Paris's renowned "Cafe Anglais", Chu's are the dishes served today at Tapei's Grand Hotel, considered by many to be among the world's 10 best hotels. Where the Cafe Anglais was a place where four course dinners dishes were prepared individually for each diner, the kitchens of the Grand, which are shown at their busiest in the film, are designed to prepare banquets where as many as 3,000 guests will be served and allowed to choose from as many as forty different dishes during a single meal.

As there is not a single false note in the kitchen scenes of the film, neither is there any fault in the preparation of any of the dishes, each of which was prepared by food consultant Lin Huei-Yi. As the daughter of China's foremost food expert, and as a respected food writer in her own right, she also served as coach to Sihung Lung (who portrays Chu), the actors in his kitchen and the one daughter who cooks, perfecting not only cooking styles but those very special Chinese ways in which one relates to the foods being prepared. Before killing a carp, for example, it is considered necessary to look into its eyes and apologize aloud for what you are about to do to it; before chopping off the head of a chicken the cook is expected to thank the bird for giving its life for the sake of his guests; and before serving any dish with mushrooms, the chef is expected to take a single mushroom from the plate with his fingers, to pop the mushroom into his mouth and make a great show of how his guests have no fear of being poisoned.

Martin Scorcese - "The Age of Innocence"

Seeing Martin Scorcese's "Taxi Driver" in 1976 was a traumatic experience for many gastronomes. In my own case, it has taken me nearly twenty-five years to get over the trauma of watching Robert De Niro literally stuff his mouth with frankfurters that had been buried in huge amounts of fried onions, hot chili peppers, ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise. After I first saw "The Age of Innocence", however, I was willing to forgive Scorcese for his earlier lapse, for with his cinematic adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel, "The Age of Innocence", Scorcese has proven, at least to gourmets, that he is finally worth taking seriously for this is one of the very few films that places food and dining in their proper social and historical perspective.

New York in the 1870s, the period in which the film is set, was a great place for people with bank accounts, and the people who populate this film had very large bank accounts indeed. It was a period in which nearly all important family, social and business contacts were made over the dinner table. French cuisine was so much the rage that the rich imported French chefs to work in their homes. English service, which was considered no less important than the food that was served, was so critical that household staffs were almost all imported from England. The family of Cornelius Vanderbilt which is barely disguised in both the Wharton novel and the Scorcese film, typified the habits of the day and between their three homes (one in New York City, one in Newport, Rhode Island, and one on the island of Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts) they had a kitchen staff that, in addition to six French chefs included ninety-three household servants, more than half of whom were English, and nineteen gardeners, all of whom but one were Italian.

Delmonico's retaurant was the liveliest dining place in America, so lively in fact that men rarely took their wives there. So many upper class New Yorkers met their mistresses at Delmonico's that George, the headwaiter, kept a discreet notebook in his pocket so that he would not mistakenly place two members of the same family in the same dining room at the same time. Despite the excellence of the cuisine and discretion shown at Delmonico's, most really serious social dining took place in the home where, as is shown in the film, as much time was devoted to the selection of the proper silverware, glasses and flowers with which to decorate the table as to the actual choice of dishes to be served. At dinners where only family members were present, it was considered de rigueur to serve at least six courses; at more festive meals, up to twelve courses might be offered. At every dinner, regardless of who was present, partly to let guests know what dishes were going to be served and partly to impress them, a menu that had been hand printed on the most expensive parchment paper was placed in front of each guest.

Seven meals are portrayed during the course of the film and in each, thanks heavily to the consultancy of food historian David McFadden and chef-caterer Rick Ellis, Scorcese is remarkably faithful to the realities the dining habits of the day. The heavy silverware, the sumptuous displays of flowers and fruits on the tables, and even the manner in which the napkins were folded (always in a triangular shape) are completely realistic as is the portrayal of the formally dressed, always silent servants attending the tables. Scorcese was even careful enough to ensure that, as was the habit of the day, no wine bottles were ever present in the dining room, because it was traditional to decant wines earlier in the evening and then to serve them in crystal decanters.

Even Scorcese's menus were carefully planned and might well have been found on the tables of his characters. While modern diners might justifiably accuse the upper class families of New York of serving too many courses of too rich foods, even today it would be difficult to fault the individual courses served. One meal, perhaps the most luxurious portrayed in the film, starts with caviar, goes on to oysters, boiled shrimps and small Caribbean lobsters, continues with a cream soup, roasted pheasants and then a large roast beef , a smoked duck breast and a whole roast goose. The side dishes included mashed potates steamed vegetables and poached apples and pears. The dessert offered in this meal was served as two separate courses. Guests started off with a creme caramel and then went on to choose between five different sorbets, each in its own bowl and each surrounded by four baskets of dried fruits.

The only true culinary fault in the film is an historical one. One of the meals served starts off with caviar and then goes on to melon, turtle consomme, roast chicken, saddle of lamb, peas in cream sauce, duckling breasts in wine, quails with grapes, artichokes in cream sauce, peaches in vanilla sauce, petits fours and fruits. The only problem is that this meal was actually prepared by the great chef Georges August Escoffier and served at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in London to celebrate the coronation of King George V, an event that took place in 1911, nearly forty years after the period in which the film was set.

The Big Night - Being Close to God

Director Stanley Tucci's "Big Night" is yet another film in which cooks and the foods they prepare are treated with the respect that they deserve. Chef Primo Pillagi, who from the gastronomic point of view is the central character of the film, is passionately devoted to the authentic regional cuisines of his native Italy. Unfortunately for Primo and his brother Segundo who manages the restaurant, they chose to open a restaurant for purists in the United States of the 1950s. As the film accurately portrays, to most Americans at that time Italian food meant spaghetti with meatballs, stewed chicken, and huge T-bone steaks all served with generous amounts of tomato sauce. None of these were particularly Italian but they were well suited to the then very naive palates of the American public.

The most successful of those quasi-Italian restaurants, such as that owned by the neighbor and competitor of the two brothers, had either a tenor or a mezzo-soprano who would sing the arias of Rossini and Verdi. With their red and white checked tablecloths and candles burning in empty Chianti bottles, such restaurants may have had little in common with genuine Italian culture or cuisine but they did make a great deal of money, people often standing on line for an hour or more before being seated. That Primo sincerely believes that such places were "raping the cuisine of Italy" is evident in the film.

The brothers, Primo and Segundo (whose names, more than coincidentally, are also the titles of the first and second courses of all Italian meals), were simply victims of their time and place. Dishes such as Primo's tri-colored rissoto, one with seafood, another with a mixture of four cheeses, and the third with spinach, are today dailyapplauded at New York's "Palio" and in Washington's "Galileo". His quail consomme, seasoned gently with saffron, would have critics raving, as they do today about the same soup served at Santa Monica's "Valentino". Alas, but in the 1950's America was simply not ready for such fare and because few of the clients who wander into Primo's restaurant appreciate his food (one actually demands a side order of spaghetti with her risotto), the brothers are constantly in debt.

They do, however, have one glorious moment, and this in the form of the truly grand meal they serve that finally bankrupts them. After starting their meal with Primo's magnificent quail consomme, the twenty-two invited guests go on to antipasti of Parma ham, roasted artichokes, sauteed mushrooms and string beans, and a platter of grilled vegetables. The star of the antipasti offerings is a caponata, a Sicilian dish of peeled, diced eggplant and onions that are first fried and then afterwards simmered slowly in a tomato, vinegar and sugar sauce. Served at room temperature with chopped capers, olives, celery and anchovies, all of which are sprinkled over with the finest olive oil, the dish is considered one of the culinary masterpieces of Italy.

The first of six main courses served, and perhaps the real star of the film, is a timpano, a dish from Calabria in which a large drum shaped oven pan lined with pastry dough is filled with multiple layers of freshly made pasta, cheeses, quartered hard boiled eggs, meatballs, and basil and oregano flavored tomato sauce. After long, slow baking, the drum shaped dish (thus its name), now golden brown all over, is removed from the pan and cut into thick wedges, each a rainbow of flavors and colors. The timpano is followed by a roast suckling pig, a stuffed baked salmon, a fat hen stuffed with pomegranates, the risotto, and bowls of roasted potatoes and red and green peppers. Dessert, as is traditional in southern Italy, is of fresh fruits, nuts and anise flavored cookies.

If there is a major difference between this film and "Babette's Feast", it is that while Babette found only one diner who understood her efforts, Primo is so wildly appreciated that one diner actually jumps up and declares with passion that "this food is so fucking good I could kill you"; another weeps silently for joy as he makes his way course by course through the meal; twoothers sigh with deep pleasure at every bite they take; and yet another constantly mumbles, over and over, in between bites the word "great". The fact that at the end of the meal several of the guests have eaten so much they fall asleep at the table, their hands clasped gently over their stomachs, is yet another compliment to the chef.

Whatever faults one may find in plot or dialogue, there are no faults whatever from the gastronomic point of view, every dish being prepared fully in accordance with tradition and with the chef's belief that "to eat good food is to be close to God". The only minor fault one finds is with the wines served, for three of the wines served come from Villa Antinori. Although Antinori did not begin to export wine to the United States until the 1960s, one might assume that the chef or a friend brought the wine from Italy. Alas, for reality, however, one of the wines is Antinori's Tignanello and that would have been truly impossible, for the very first attempt at producing this great wine was not even made until the mid 1970s, some twenty years after the period in which the film is set.

The opening shot of the film shows the restaurant's waiter munching on a piece of bread. The film closes with Primo, Segundo and the waiter eating scrambled eggs and day old bread. What gives even those moments a remarkable sense of culinary reality is that only people who truly adore Italian cuisine would drink grappa with their bread and heavy red wine with their scrambled eggs.

Impeccable but Unappetizing
Peter Greenway's "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover"


There is an excellent chance that no film has ever treated the arts of the chef and the pleasures of the diner as badly as Peter Greenway's The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. In this film, human corporeality, eating, drinking, defecating, urinating, copulating, belching, vomiting, spitting and bleeding are so closely related that it is impossible to separate out what is aesthetically pleasing and what is merely disgusting. Violence and eroticism and vulgarity and finesse are so intertwined here that Greenway makes it difficult to decide where eating ends and human waste disposal begins.

It is to Le Hollandais, a restaurant named after the large reproduction of a famous Frans Hals painting that adorns one wall of the dining room, that the thief and his wife come every night for dinner. The thief, an unrepentant model of cruelty, greed and unchecked self-interest, believes that eating out is a means of gaining social respectability. Always accompanied by the members of his gang, a collection of revolting, uncouth characters who like their boss, have no appreciation whatever for fine food, the thief is evil personified, a man with no redeeming virtues whatever. His wife, the victim of his bullying, physical violence and blackmail is a more sympathetic character who values and understands the dishes that are set before her.

The cook, the owner of the restaurant, is a perfectionist, believing that all foods should be tasted, even if only experimentally. Although he appreciates the wife and offers her some of his finer experiments, he detests the thief. Knowing that the thief is a dangerous man, the cook treats him with a curious mixture of politeness and disdain.

It comes as no surprise when the wife takes as her lover another regular visitor to the restaurant, a quiet, modest man who is immersed in his love of books, the antithesis of her husband. Nor does it surprise when the cook helps them find places in the restaurant where it is relatively safe for them to make love, virtually under the nose of the thief. And make love they do - in the toilet, in pantries, in walk-in refrigerators. That they are finally caught by the thief and that the lover is destined to be served up as the chef d'oeuvre of a dinner is no more shocking or surprising than any of the other events in the film.

Because Greenway's goal is to dismay, shock and disgust us, the kitchen, the restaurant and the meals served here are particularly unappetizing. What makes them fascinating, however, is Greenway's application of his unique brand of hyper-reality to historical and social settings. The time-frame of the kitchens is a sliding one, incorporating the filth and squallor that typified the cooking halls of 14th century European baronies as well as the splendor and orderliness of the kitchens of the great chef Careme when he held forth in the Brighton Pavillion in the early 19th century. The decorative pieces of poached and fresh fruits are pure Careme, having taking hours of painstaking effort to create. The larders, however, are Medieval - swans, fat eels, calves' brains, freshwater fish, pearl barley truffles, piles of macaroni and rumps of beef arranged in ways that overwhelm rather than please the senses.

Even though the dishes prepared by the cook are impeccable in presentation and quality, Greenway assures that not one dish will make itself appealing to those in the audience. Avocado in vinaigrette sauce with shrimps; truffled roast chickens; a salad of pike fillets with oysters; a rich potage a la Monglas - a creamy soup made with foie gras, truffles, and mushrooms and flavored with Madeira can all be enormously rewarding culinary experiences, but when accompanied by the farts, belches and vomiting of the crooks that sit at the table, one is hard pressed to think of any food, no matter how masterfully prepared, as being appetizing.

Even if it were not for the noxious company, this is not a restaurant to which most true gourmets would be attracted. Great cooking should be decorative but it should not be ostentatious. Nor should sophisticated modern dining involve great amounts of waste, overindulgence in too many rich and uncomplimentary courses that follow one after the other, or service that is so stilted and formal that it borders on groveling. Such vulgar displays have been banished from the table, as much for the sake of hygiene andgood taste as for reasons of expediency.

There are some who claim that the most offensive moment of the film is the moment when the lover's body, spit roasted and garnished with cauliflowers and turnips is served up as the single course in a special dinner prepared for the thief. From the moral point of view, this objection stands up badly, for in this filmwhere excess is the rule, the eating of human flesh is no more offensive than eating dog excrement, urinating into a sauce, torturing a young boy or mutilating the face of a beautiful woman, all of which have their place in Greenway's world.

Culinary purists will argue, however, that spit roasting is not the ideal way to prepare human flesh. Those who have sampled this dish (including Guy du Maupessant, Marco Polo and Captain James Cook, who was eventually eaten himself) are in general agreement that the best means of cookery is by slow stewing in a peppery red wine marinade that contains juniper berries, marjoram, rosemary and plenty of onions.

Note: Those wanting to read or prepare several of the dishes from Babette's Feast; Eat, Drink, Man, Woman; and Big Night will find recipes by clicking here

© Daniel Rogov