Over the last 15 years or so, Charles-Henry gave us other kitchen treasures, as you see in the picture below. The set of three gratin dishes and the "bean pot" are pieces he bought from a vendor in an outdoor market not far from his Paris apartment, the Marché de l'Avenue de Saxe in the 7th arrondissement. I was with him when he bought them in the year 2000. He gave them to us a few years later because, he said, he wasn't using his oven any more and he thought we could make better use of ovenproof cookware. For more than a decade before the last time I saw him in 2017, he would come spend a week or two at our house in summertime, and we was always happy to see us using the things he had given us.
The dish at the bottom left of the picture is a soufflé dish that was his grandmother's, he said. I have no idea how old it might be. Since he died a few weeks ago at age 99, how old must his grandmother have been? I don't even know if he was talking about his paternal grandmother or his maternal grandmother. The cut-glass bowl (is that what it is?) on the right has no history that he shared. He just gave it to us. I'm sure he didn't buy it as a present for us. We use it fairly often. I should have asked him for more information about it before it was too late.
We often see dishes like the gratin dishes for sale at village brocantes and it does make me wonder why people don't want them any more, they are so useful.
ReplyDeleteWe have a glass bowl very like yours but some of the spaces in the pattern have been coloured with glass paint. It's very pretty and we got that at a brocante some years ago.
I'm sure it did give CHM great pleasure to see you using the cookware he gave you, particularly the pieces that were in his family. As you are such keen chefs, he knew you would both put them to good use. That soufflé dish looks enormous though. Do you ever make such a grand soufflé? I'd be afraid to try!
ReplyDeleteDo you know Jacques Pépin's mother's soufflé recipe? It's very simple — no beaten egg whites. I will send you a link to a post about it on my blog.
DeleteTry this link.
DeleteKen, are these very heavy (the set)? Like they are enameled cast iron, or something like that?
ReplyDeleteNo, they are stoneware, not iron. They are heavy, however.
DeleteThe clay pots red colors go with your kitchen tile. Yes, we all wish we'd asked more questions of our friends and parents before they died.Tempus fugit.
ReplyDeleteThe red goes with tile floor, and the yellow goes with the kitchen walls.
DeleteI have always loved your kitchen floor and walls.
ReplyDeleteBettyAnn
: ^ )
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ReplyDeleteMaybe you have Jacques Pépin's book The Apprentice in the Kitchen: My Life in the Kitchen. Here's a link to his mother's recipe for a simple delicious cheese soufflé.
I would enjoy using a bean pot like that! I have seen cut class items and the cuts are quite sharp and easily distinguished from more formed shapes like the dish above appears to me. (Think of Waterford Crystal goglets)
ReplyDeleteDo you think that bowl is crystal? I'm showing my ignorance here.
DeleteIt does not look like crystal to me.
DeleteAll those dishes look like they just came from the store (perfect condition, good color) and shiny !
ReplyDeleteWonderful cookware, but the best gift of all was your friendship. ;-)
ReplyDeleteI know that's true, D. Like any relationship, there were ups and downs to ours, but the friendship always rebounded. Charles-Henry's partner Frank liked me and Walt, or so C-H told me. C-H always spoke French with me, and also with Walt. He wanted to help us continue to improve our language skills.
DeleteI have often wondered if you and Walt speak French at home on a regular basis when it’s just the two of you?
DeleteWe don't speak French spontaneously to each other when we are at home. But if I'm reading something in French that I think Walt would like or need to know to, I'll read it to him out loud in French. He does the same. Basically, we speak a lot of Franglais — that's English peppered with a good number French words and expressions. We make it a point to pronounce French place names, people's names, and business names as they are pronounced in French, not anglicized versions of them. I guess Paris is the main exception to that rule.
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