Several years ago I was invited to a dinner party hosted by a world-traveling couple who divided their time between a summer house in New Hampshire, a ranch in New Zealand and a stunning townhouse on Avenue Victor Hugo in Paris' 16th arrondissement. As if living in three locales wasn't exotic enough, they always seemed to be flying off to somewhere else. As their travel methods were in the upper realm of rented Tuscan chateaus and exclusive inns in the snowy mountains of Japan, their travel stories were usually riveting.
It helped that the couple, Joe and Elizabeth, had an excellent eye for detail. They could adroitly distill the singular qualities of travel experiences at a certain tier, like finding a hotel sewing kit replete with hand-honed needles made of bone, or soaking in a cedar hot tub under a star-filled sky, with glasses of freshly pressed apple juice perched in a snow bank beside them.
They were also foodies (a good thing considering their propensity for world travel) so in addition to telling fantastic travel stories, the food they served at their dinner parties was reliably delicious. One confection in particular, a dense, (almost) flour-less chocolate cake made a particularly strong impression, not only for its flavor but for its direct connection to a famous Fauve artist, Henri Matisse.
Their house in Paris was the residence that Elizabeth and Joe tended to favor as a factory on its outskirts of the city was the source of their income. As I recall, their family had had business in France for generations so they were well-connected socially. One of their friends in Paris was a fairly remarkable woman by the name of Alexina "Teeny" Sattler.
Teeny was an American, born in Ohio around the time of the first World War. She was the daughter of a prominent surgeon. Her mother had ties to the European art world. Teeny went to Paris in the 1920's and became friends with Marcel Duchamp through a common interest: they both loved to play chess. Marcel would later become one of the most influential French artists of the post-War period, first as a Da-Da artist and then subsequently in the realm of Surrealism and Pop art. Teeny also met and married Pierre Matisse, the eldest son of Henri Matisse. They were married until 1949. In 1954 she was married in New York to her lifelong friend Marcel Duchamp and they were together until his death in 1968.
Whenever Elizabeth and Joe would visit Teeny in her beautiful villa on the outskirts of Paris, they were always struck by the vast collection of Matisse and Duchamp original art that seemed to be almost casually tucked into just about every corner. Some of them were inscribed "To Teeny, from Henri." Though they never managed to depart from one of their visits with a gift of any of those canvases, Elizabeth did manage to get from Teeny her recipe for a simple, dense chocolate cake that she said was Henri Matisse's favorite. Elizabeth told me she copied the recipe directly from Teeny's cookbook and, when I asked her for it after she served it at a dinner party, she translated it into English for me on the spot.
Gateau au chocolat
Ingredients:
4 eggs
chocolate, butter, sugar (amounts equal to the weight of the eggs)
2 Tablespoons AP flour
Weigh 4 eggs and measure the equivalent of Callebut chocolate, butter, and sugar. Melt the chocolate in a saucepan, with a small cup of strong coffee on a low flame. When melted, take off the fire and add the butter little by little while stirring. Then, still stirring, add the egg yolks one at a time, then the granulated sugar. Add the flour last. Finally, beat hard and fold in the egg whites, en niege ("in snow").
Put the preparation in a buttered mold. Cook in a gentle oven (250F) around 45 minutes. Let it cool, turn out of the mold and sprinkle with sucre glace (powdered sugar).
Comments