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The Apprentice's Pot au Feu

Creamy Morning Eggs

Alexandre's Omelette aux Cèpes

Raviole de Fois Gras

Monkey Brains Cocktail

Chef's Own Sweet and Sour, Hot and Cold Eggs

Ris de Veau aux Morilles

Colette's Seven Hour Lamb

Most of the food in the Grave Gourmet is prepared in three star restaurants and is far beyond the ken of the author's or any other amateur's kitchen. But amateurs can still come very close. Two of the recipes given here have their roots in three star restaurants. Chef's Own Sweet and Sour, Hot and Cold Eggs is very close to the halcyon three star reality. Three Star Sweetbreads is a different recipe from the one portrayed in the book, largely because the cost of so much truffle would be prohibitively expensive. It's still a very tasty dish.

A number of the dishes mentioned in the novel are great French classics. I've included recipes for two of the best: pot au feu and seven hour lamb. Both should be in any cook's repertoire.

Alexandre is a far better cook than I can even hope to be, and I've included three of his favorites: his slow cooked scrambled eggs, his omelet, and his French style Ravioles de Foie Gras. The slow cooked eggs never made it into the final copy of the book...

Finally, I couldn't resist sharing the recipe for Monkey Brains. It gets a laugh in the book and it's horrible to look at, but it's still drinkable. At least once.

A word about cooking philosophy. These recipes are simple and almost foolproof. However, they will not tolerate shortcuts since they are all highly dependant on the quality of their ingredients.

There is a wonderful passage in one of the Rex Stout books where Archie chides Nero Wolf, pointing out that even his extraordinary pallet would not recognize if lemon extract had been substituted for the real thing in a recipe. Wolf tut tuts and advises him not to set foot on the slippery slope.

Wolfe's point is that all the cut corners add up and you wind up with an institutional tasting dish and not something sublime. If time in the kitchen is a burden, do what chefs do on their day off and order Chinese. It'll be far better tasting that the chemical horror you would have come up with otherwise.

A final point. The one corner you must never cut is using packaged stock. This is invariable over-seasoned and laden with chemicals to trap appeal to the unsuspecting consumer. By the time it has been incorporated in a sauce and reduced it will be toxic. Make your own. It's easy. It's satisfying. And it will transform your cooking. The pot au feu recipe below will yield more than enough broth to make the other three recipes that call for stock. One problem solved.

The idea is that it all adds up. You can cheat one ingredient, but if you cheat on them all, your cooking with have a nasty institutional taste to it.

Shortcuts: stock! Nero Wolf and the bottled lemon juice. "As far as I'm concerned, the only viable short-cut is to order Chinese take-away, which is great stuff. If you want to cook, do it right. No single short-cut will kill your cooking, but the accumulation definitely will." My quote.