Coq au Vin
I remember the first time I set foot inside a "French" restaurant. In the 1960s a work colleague and I used to share a weekly lottery ticket and one week we struck it lucky and won NZ10 pounds. He was all for ploughing it back into tickets. I figured my lucky streak was probably going to begin and end right there, so I said I was taking my share and going out for dinner.
Now this was in the days when dining out usually meant eating a roast dinner in a hotel dining room or a chicken skin and cabbage concoction at a Chinese hash house. But things were looking up in New Zealand's capital city, Wellington, and it now boasted a French restaurant, Le Normandie, run by the formidable Madame Louise.
I made my booking, put on my Sunday best and took the boyfriend of the time to the burgundy velveted splendour of the restaurant. No glaring light from hotel dining room chandeliers here. No harsh fluorescent lighting bouncing off formica table tops.
It was dark, warm and intimate with candles glowing on the impeccable table linen and crystal glasses gleaming alongside the silver cutlery. I was immediately at home, a food connoisseur, a woman of the world.
We plunged into the wine list and ordered something that sounded impressively sophisticated. The waiter poured a little in my friend's glass. My friend stared hopefully at the tiny offering while under the table my foot was desperately trying to make a connection with his ankle. I tried to nod nonchalantly in the direction of his glass. Eventually I had to mutter - "Taste the wine!"
He did a hasty gulp and swill. ""I thought that chap was being a bit miserly with the drink," he confided later.
It was the first of many trips to restaurants specialising in French cuisine. I was - and still am - a voracious reader of cookbooks. Having been brought up on typical English fare, I was thrilled to be trying the dishes that I had only read about. I spent what then represented a fortune buying the weight Larousse Gastronomique and read nightly of such dishes as animelles (you don't want to know), Coquilles Saint-Jacques, boeuf Bourguinonne, supremes de volaille, saute de veau Marengo and my favourite escargots!
At weekends I would slog away in the kitchen while the maternal parent was out playing golf and I whipped up such dishes as locally available ingredients would permit. I would spend hours on sauces - no packs of readymade stock in the supermarket in those days. The condiments shelf which had previously contained only curry powder, cayenne pepper, nutmeg, mixed herbs, cinnamon and cloves and a few other "English" herbs and spices suddenly started growing like Topsy.
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