Perfect Order

By David Hoffmann

“Never let the past follow too closely...”
Leopold S Lurdan
Leopold S Lurdan, an internationally acclaimed food writer and feared
restaurant reviewer is an old school friend of Marco Bragg, a successful
celebrity chef, entrepreneur and television personality.
Lurdan is embarking upon his ‘Italian Project’, a culinary journey tracking
through the streets of Rome to the hill top towns of Piedmont, researching
his new book on the regional cucina of Italy, Lurdan On The Food And
Culinary Traditions Of Central And Northern Italy. A rambunctious critic of
the fusion movement, Lurdan detests innovation for its sake alone.
Lurdan and Bragg are seeking rapprochement after a series of increasingly
bitter exchanges in their respective newspaper columns following Lurdan’s
latest scathing review of Sol Invictus, Bragg’s widely acclaimed flagship
restaurant. The recently remarried Bragg and his young wife Tiffany
who are honeymooning in Italy have been invited to spend an indulgent
weekend at La Fortuna, Lurdan’s restored 18th century villa.
Coming together again, the friends retrace their lives from school days
through to the professional success each has enjoyed, on a weekend that
will change their lives forever...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Jul 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456844349

David Hoffmann

David Hoffmann, FNIMH, AHG, has been a clinical medical herbalist since 1979. A Fellow of Britain’s National Institute of Medical Herbalists, he is one of the founding members of the American Herbalists Guild and the author of 17 books, including Herbs for Healthy Aging, Medical Herbalism, The Complete Illustrated Holistic Herbal, and The Herbal Handbook. He teaches herbal medicine throughout the English-speaking world and lives in California.

Book preview

Copyright © 2011 by David Hoffmann.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011912269

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4568-6952-6

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4568-6951-9

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4568-4434-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-800-618-969

www.Xlibris.com.au

[e-mail]

500528

Contents

Chapter 1      Journey of Good Intentions

Chapter 2      Sol Invictus

Chapter 3      A Lunch Too Far

Chapter 4      Risotto By and Large

Chapter 5      The Good Old School

Chapter 6      Nemesis

Chapter 7      From Crime to Culinaria

Chapter 8      Rome

Chapter 9      Culture and Cuisine

Chapter 10      The Art of Reviewing

Chapter 11      Roman Encounters

Chapter 12      Rome in Several Guises

Chapter 13      A Luncheon Pizza

Chapter 14      Sofia Minerva

Chapter 15      The Space of Food

Chapter 16      The Paradox of Expectation

Chapter 17      Rome By Any Other Name

Chapter 18      A Roman Feast

Chapter 19      Chiaroscuro

Chapter 20      Sausages

Chapter 21      Festival of the Pig

Chapter 22      Good and Evil

Chapter 23      La Fortuna

Chapter 24      Rapprochement

Chapter 25      Lurdan’s Way

Chapter 26      Order Restored

For Katie, without whom there would have been no beginning

Chapter 1

Journey of Good Intentions

Good intentions mean nothing. Meagrely talented chefs and clueless restaurant owners are charlatans, deserving no allowance. As the word charlatans does not appear to be too harsh a description in the face of their continuing culinary crimes against humanity, one has decided to leave that label stand, regardless of any hurt or distress that might be caused to the more sensitive among their culinary cabal. Whether we dine out regularly or less frequently, perhaps for a special occasion—birthdays, engagements, a clean divorce, family celebrations like the death of a particularly annoying but wealthy relative, a catch up with an old friend—there should be a clear recognition that the vain efforts of the well-intended but inept or dishonest cadres of the ‘hospitality’ collective should be exposed, with the worst offenders being brought to account. Their efforts should be judged with a cool head and a cooler heart and, if required, more than a dash of sang-froid. That’s what I do; expose the pretenders, frauds, incompetents and those just simply ‘taking the piss’ with what is sometimes too lazily described as the ‘dining public’.

Having got that little thingy out of the way, I can share the following with you; my impending and happily fully funded journey to Rome and beyond, (well fully funded apart from the considerable costs associated with the running and maintenance of La Fortuna my modestly sized fifteen-room, eighteenth century Italian villa), had its officially sanctioned origins only in the few weeks before my Italian Project commenced. You will soon see that it is my dear publisher’s desire for your writer to cast what is widely accepted to be his expert culinary eye over the regional cucina of central and northern Italy and to provide his usual tide of revealing insights into the milieu of Italian culinary traditions. The central tenet of the Italian Project, a handy shorthand that has been applied to this cheerfully arduous jaunt, is the need, in the context of Italian cucina regionale, to reaffirm and enforce what your writer likes to so eloquently describe as ‘the strict and necessary adherence to relevant culinary orthodoxy and traditional elements’. My trademark intellectual rigor, fearless candour, and extreme objectivity can be guaranteed.

My obliging publishers are confident of their next best-seller, expecting at least a replication of the phenomenal world-wide success achieved by your writer through committing to paper his authoritative opinions, observations, insights, pronouncements and dictates on the food and culinary traditions of the ‘F’ country in Lurdan On The Food And Culinary Traditions Of France. Of course, as readers will be only too well aware, even before its publication one was already recognised as the foremost international expert, analyst, commentator, profound influence and trendsetter on French cuisine. One’s paramount position atop the steep heights of culinary influence is due, in no little part, to my cavalcade of successful books on the cuisine of the ‘F’ country (Lurdan On The Bistros of Paris, Lurdan On The Bistros of Lyon, Lurdan’s Provence, Lurdan’s Gascony, Lurdan’s Long Summer in the Languedoc, Lurdan on the Food and Wine of Burgundy and the simply entitled La Coupole, which is both a history of that famous and eponymous brasserie as well a personal homage to my favourite Parisian Sunday lunch spot). Not surprisingly, my influential weekly column in France Soir, which one has penned for the past ten or so years, has also played no small part in my ascendency to the peak of culinary influence in the ‘F’ country. But it was the publication of my internationally acclaimed best-seller and multi-award winning three-volume exegesis on the cuisine and culinary traditions of the ‘F’ country which has undoubtedly burnished my already glistening reputation. Of course, and the following may come as only little surprise to readers, my three-volume masterpiece has come to be recognised by the culinary cognoscente as the definitive and indispensable reference work, a culinary bible as it were, for all matters concerning the cuisine and culinary traditions of the ‘F’ country. Indeed the food and wine editor for La Monde (a rival Parisian rag) wrote upon the publication of the French translation of my magnum opus:

M Leopold S Lurdan is surely the ultimate Anglo-Saxon authority on French cuisine for our times.

(LSL translation)

Should one also mention that one was invested as a Chevalier de Medal de Honour in recognition of one’s unparalleled contribution to French cuisine and culture, and awarded both the Prix Renaudot for non-fiction in recognition of Lurdan On The Food And Culinary Traditions Of France as well as France Soir’s latest annual award for the greatest contribution to French cuisine by a foreign writer? OK, one has! Your writer can share with readers a little ‘inside information’; a pilot episode for a television series based on the previously identified three-volume tome on the ‘F’ country’s cuisine and culinary traditions is set for filming later in the year. I’m forbidden from saying a word more about it at the moment, not merely because of the contractual terms agreed to with the network but also because of the dictates of good form.

As those who know me best will be only too well aware, I possess an acute sense of natural diffidence and modesty that is behind my persistent refusal to strut the stage of self-importance. The failure of others in the restaurant collective and their servile PR and media boosters to act in a similarly reticent fashion is conduct that one finds to be most annoying as well as evidence of their lack of good faith.

It may then come as no surprise to readers, that there are other thingies, swirling about in the culinary orbit, which also provoke my annoyance. Like the description ‘foodie’ and the mindset underpinning it, which your writer simply detests. So called ‘foodies’ are some of the worst attention seekers whose culinary raison d’être is not just to eat food, rather it is to eat only fine or exotic food and to talk about it in the most tedious fashion. No rare variety of wild thyme growing only on a near inaccessible spur of the Atlas Mountains, gathered by goat herders and wandering hermits, is too recherché to a devoted ‘foodie’. Unfortunately I have even been compelled, through the occasionally unfortunate conjunction of time, place and circumstance, to converse with such people at masterclass events and the like where culinary icons like me, and a few other professionals who have something substantial to add to the culinary tableau, are compelled to share space with dreary celebrity chefs as well as the hosts and judges of dull television cooking shows and contrived cooking competitions. Their conversations are too frequently littered with pretentious drivel, such as; ‘I’m a foodie, so I only ever use Fleur de Sel harvested from the Bay of Biscay’ or ‘Unless the lentils are organic and from Castelluccio they are simply not worth buying’ or ‘The thought of purchasing any chocolate other than Amedei Chuao, Amedei Toscano or Valrhona to make my special chocolate brownies for the office morning tea is simply beyond contemplation.’

It is always a trap to be lured towards form over substance, as I so convincingly explained while speaking at the official conference dinner for the latest in the series of the American Psychiatric Association’s annual dirty weekends in San Francisco. As an aside, the conference had been predictably sponsored by a trans-global pharmaceutical conglomerate that makes mega profits by, in part, encouraging medical types to medicate their patients with drugs designed to ‘even out’ behaviour, which in many cases is little more than evidence of a human foible or the tariff levied on each of us for making our way through the world. Behaviour such as remaining unmoved and disinterested in boring company, having a strong inclination towards scrupulous personal hygiene, or refusing to remain gormlessly happy in the face of life’s little barbs or catastrophes.

My speech helpfully outlined for the gathered head-shrinks certain human traits, which I suggested were likely to be key indicators of their patients suffering some form of acute personality disorder, profound underlying neurosis, psychosis or a full-blown delusional disorder;

any person self-identifying as a ‘foodie’ should immediately be diagnosed as a most tedious neurotic, whose interest is directed towards sourcing new and supposedly ‘edgy’ ingredients and uncovering novel cooking techniques, all masked with a veneer of genuine intellectual and emotional interest in the culinary arts. Similarly a ‘gourmet’ is likely to be annoyingly picky and pettish diner, mean spirited and substantially lacking generosity in all facets of their grimly dull life, exhibiting several of the diagnostic tags indicative of the patient having an anti-social personality disorder. Worst of the bunch though is anyone presenting as a so-called ‘wine buff’, a description that is as frequently self-applied as medical types are inclined to self-prescribe opiates or their synthetic alternatives. A wine buff, especially if male, will almost invariably be quickly found to be a complete bore, afflicted by what a majority of one’s audience, in the absence of any other symptoms, might all too readily diagnose as a delusional disorder.

On a tandem note, some people suffer a similarly destructive personality defect that reveals itself through what one likes to describe as food neuroticism: vegetarianism, the widespread self-diagnosis of gluten and lactose intolerances and the increasing incidence of attention seekers reporting a susceptibility to dubious food allergies. The most disturbing aspect is that the reporting of such neurotic traits is aided, abetted and encouraged by your colleagues, lesser medical quacks and the swelling ranks of charlatans peddling alternative therapies, such as aroma therapy, crystal healing, naturopathy, iridology and acupuncture, including self-appointed ‘health gurus’ who espouse, for no good reason that I see, a holistic approach to nutrition and health. Of course the so called gurus’ dubious prescriptions often focus on a vegan or pescetarian diet high in organic fruit and vegetables, regular detox, colonic irrigation and daily faecal examination. One has been able to discern an acutely self-destructive trait among most food neurotics, sometimes spilling over into a kind of mass culinary psychosis. It’s a theme one has taken up in one’s best-selling and indeed most recent book, which is as much a philosophical manifesto as social and culinary critique, ‘Food Neuroticism and Self Loathing’, which was published late last year and just in time for Christmas. I can really do no more than commend my book to you, which I should mention is for sale in the foyer at the publications stand at a special conference price.

At the conclusion to my speech, which I might add was delivered entirely without notes, it was apparent that I had struck something of a chord with the largely introverted audience. Indeed after my closing remarks in which I felt compelled to describe myself as ‘a strong moral lantern and dynamic influence founded on a strength of character which is possessed of a brooding melancholy coupled with a well-disguised vulnerable charm’ the gathered head shrinks gave your writer a standing ovation that lasted an embarrassing, almost humbling, seven minutes and twenty-six seconds. The rounds of after dinner martinis at Café Tosca lasted well into the early morning.

The robust six-figure advance, plus expenses, for the trouble of undertaking the Italian Project and related wanderings also exercised some small influence on the decision to accept my publisher’s kind invitation. It’s better to be lucky than good. But the Italian Project will not be all play, for no doubt there will be a gruelling schedule of research taking the form of abundant consumption of food and wine necessarily involving me spending several months journeying throughout central and northern Italy on a quest that only the heroic could contemplate without immediate access to a second liver (perhaps sourced from a willing donor in some Third World backwater—Chennai, Mogadishu, Los Angeles) and resort to my renowned cast-iron constitution. For the most part, I intend to use my Italian shack as a convenient and comfortable base, being so handily located on a hill to the east of the delightful Piedmont town of Alba.

The ancient title to La Fortuna came with two separate vineyards attached. Over time, I have come to understand that in the fugue state in which Italy was enmeshed in 1945 with her fascist delusions evaporated, the property had been split up with most of the land given to peasants as part of what was described by the communists as ‘land reform’. The family matriarch, who remained in the villa surrounded by just under a hectare of land, was never again seen in Alba. Her urbane and Anglophile son (who had an abiding love of good whisky, Elgar and his two English Setters, Brindi and Bobby), described her self imposed exile as stemming from the deep sense of shame his mother felt when forced to confront the beneficiaries of the land reforms, whom she viewed until her last breath as a godless rabble of communist traitors, bandits and war criminals engaged in the unlawful occupation of her family’s ancestral land. The separate vineyards were only recovered by the previous owner of La Fortuna for a small price in the early 1970s, a time when there was little international demand for Italian wine and which neatly corresponds to the then widely held view that most of the wine produced in Piedmont, and Italy more generally, was simply exorable. The vineyards; one of just over 2.2 hectares planted with Dolcetto and Cortese, plus a small but extremely well regarded .4 hectare parcel of Nebbiolo within a noted DOGC Barbaresco vineyard, the balance of which is owned by one of the better small producers of Barbaresco who is also contracted to make my wine. Both vineyards are situated aside the serpentine road leading to the seemingly untroubled wine villages of Barbaresco and Neive.

As Fortuna would have it, both cornucopia and rudder in a whirl, my ever-indulgent publisher’s desire for your writer to undertake the Italian Project, happily synchronised with my own independent reasons for travelling to Italy, albeit, slightly earlier in the year than one would normally be inclined to venture northwards. Readers may not be too shocked by what I am going to disclose, even allowing for the untrue perception of me that is so often peddled in the media by the more disaffected and whining elements of the cocaine addicted restaurant industry collective, a collective, by the way, every bit as vociferously hostile to contrary views as say a former Soviet State Artists Committee or the hard left-leaning, anti-west academy entrenched in Australia’s various tertiary education ossuaries. Can I suggest (well as I’m writing this of course I can) that I have been provoked into clarifying my thoughts and mapping out an appropriate course of action in response to an embarrassingly emotional tirade of hurtful and unwarranted criticism your writer has received from an attention seeking provocateur in an opposition tabloid. My protagonist is a chef-cum-restaurant owner-cum-culinary entrepreneur-cum-television personality of very limited talent, who must have been bruised by my latest unfavourable review of his inner city ‘establishment’ restaurant. The restaurant in question is the Melbourne flagship of his restaurant empire, which comprises two other high end, formal dining venues (located in Sydney and Singapore), half a dozen bistros, a couple of upmarket pizza joints, as well as a chain of food stores in the Melbourne CBD and several leafy inner city suburbs where it is considered routine to spend $45 for a four-serve pack of rubbery ravioli and a tub of unremarkable arrabbiata sauce.

Inexplicably, the restaurant concerned, Sol Invictus, has enjoyed wide critical acclaim and public support since opening to much fanfare some eighteen months ago. Giving more thought to the quandary, its success is perhaps not entirely inexplicable, given the overt PR machine at work and the flood tide of increasingly demeaning, craven and fawning reviews written about Sol Invictus by certain media drones, who brazenly misrepresent themselves as ‘restaurant critics’. Among the worst of them is the toady, servile, thirty-something pretender and noted cocaine snorter Sebastian Pratt. The result of the media hype is depressing enough, though an added feature of it, which would escape the immediate attention of most casual observers, is that it also provides yet another nauseating, bile raising example, if indeed another was needed, of it being not what you know rather who you know.

More happily, I like to at least entertain the thought that those who properly appreciate the importance of the culinary arts—or indeed fine art, music, poetry, or a deep affection for good wine—as a civilising balm for our increasingly degraded, culturally bereft, politically correct, and nanny state society (OK, those like you and me) have simply been imbued with a more highly developed and attuned aesthetic sensibility. None of us who fit the description in the preceding sentence should doubt then that the pursuit of the culinary ideal can lead to wisdom and insight about how we might best live our lives. Culinary and cultural traditions, at their core, do nothing less than demonstrate a refusal to compromise to the limited, banal (would plebeian be going too far?), plebeian tastes and mundane habits of the blunt-witted masses. Of course, I’m happy whenever I read that my opinions are described as uncompromising. Well, that’s the Lurdanian style! Let me tell you, it is important that culinary experts and restaurant reviewers ‘pull no punches’ (as the use of that phrase in contexts other than those relating to the sport of boxing will be frequently clichéd, my advice is to be vigilant for such lazy transgressions) in relation to what are the catalogue of culinary travesties dressed up as ‘modern Italian and French food’ that your writer frequently encounters. Given my staunch advocacy in support of regionalism and micro-regionalism, as well as my foundational support of the Slow Food Movement’s manifesto, how could it be otherwise? As an avowed and rambunctious opponent of the so-called ‘fusion’ movement, I detest ‘innovation’ for its sake alone.

Chapter 2

Sol Invictus

Culinary traditions develop through individuals standing at the hearth across the generations. To gauge what powerful forces underlie culinary traditions my readers only need consider the substantial controversies surrounding cassoulet, the regional meat and bean stew made famous in the south-west of the ‘F’ country. Interesting and firmly entrenched regional variations abound concerning the essential combination of ingredients for an authentic cassoulet. Of course, while there are several controversial aspects attaching to the subject, the most pointedly controversial element, as the subject of looking at the Immaculate Conception from a Marxist perspective might dominate discussion over dinner in a Church of England presbytery, concerns the type and combination of meats used in the stew.

I recall that it was the rather eccentric, but nonetheless noted

food historian, Mr Waverly Root who arrived at a full characterisation of the ingrained,