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Van
Gogh's Table at the Auberge Ravoux
Recipes From the Artist's Last Home and Paintings
of Café Life
By
Alexandra Leaf and Fred Leeman (Artisan)
You
probably won't crave to emulate just the food in Van
Gogh's Table At the Auberge Ravoux: Recipes From the
Artist's Last Home and Paintings of Café Life,
but the lifestyle as well. Auberge Ravoux, in Auvers-Sur-Oise,
is a tiny artist's village 20 miles from Paris. Van
Gogh found peace there after a tumultuous life and
this beautiful book makes it clear why.
Interest
in eating and/or cooking is not a prerequisite; the
book is a keepsake strictly for the gorgeously reproduced
paintings, which take up its first half. Mesmerizing
works like "Dr. Gachet Sitting at a Table with
Books and a Glass with Sprigs of Foxgloves" (1890);
"A Plate of Lemons and a Carafe" (1887);
and "Woman at a Table in the Café du Tambourin"
(1887) are as compelling here as they have been in
any other venue.
If
you do want to enjoy some of the same fetching fare
as Van Gogh did, there are two routes you can take.
The first is to prepare delights from the book (which
is written by renowned culinary historian Leaf and
professor Leeman who is former chief curator of Amsterdam's
Van Gogh Museum), like stewed chicken with mustard-cream
sauce; seven-hour lamb Ravoux style with sautéed
potatoes and smoked slab bacon; mache, pine nut and
raw foie gras salad; and apple tartlets with caramel
sauce. Or you could book a flight to France—the
auberge today operates as the Maison de Van Gogh,
where visitors to the café feast on the same
regional cuisine to which the painter paid homage.
RECIPES
—Stewed
Chicken with Mustard-Cream Sauce
(Updated:
01/16/09 SB)
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