May 20

Honoré  de Balzac's Birthday
 

Honoré de Balzac was one of France's greatest writers and one of the world's major nineteenth century novelists. He is regarded as  the creator of the realistic novel and the first person to use the "reappearing character" as a literary device which became the connecting link in what was a sequence of almost 100 novels and plays collectively entitled La Comédie Humaine (The Human Comedy), which presents an overview of French life in the years after the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815.

Balzac's most popular works include Eugenie Grandet,  Le Pere Goriot, and Cousin Bette, all of which are part of La Comédie Humaine. Many of his novels and stories have been adapted into films and teleplays. Recent films include Don't Touch the Axe (2007) Passion in the Desert (1997) Cousin Bette (1997), Colonel Chabert (1994), La Belle Noiseuse - Divertimento (1991), Splendeur et misères des courtisanes (1975), and Pere Goriot (1971).  La Fille aux Yeux d'Or (The Girl with the Golden Eyes) has been filmed several times, it's popularity influenced  more by its lesbian subtext  than by its evocation of Paris as a city of the dammed.
 

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Honoré  de Balzac


Balzac would lock himself away during creative bursts, drinking coffee and eating only fruit and eggs. When he finally took a break, he was known to consume huge quantities of food. One report recalls that at the Véry restaurant he consumed at one sitting "a hundred Ostend oysters, twelve cutlets of salt-meadow mutton, a duck with turnips, two partridges and a Normandy sole," not to mention the desserts, fruit and liqueurs with which he ended his gluttonous feast. His dinner parties often had themes. Once he served a meal of nothing but onions: onion soup, his favorite onion puree, onion juice, onion fritters and onions with truffles.

Balzac cited three reasons for his prolific output. The first was his enormous debts which required constant publication and royalties to help pay them off. The second was his addiction to coffee which he drank by the liter. 'The third was his passion for truffles. Balzac wrote "If one truffle falls at my platter, that will suffice: it is the egg which immediately hatches ten characters for La Comédie Humaine '

Balzac's obsession with truffles led to the creation of glace Balzac (truffle ice cream), one of the most improbable food combinations ever created by the French. Shortly after glace Balzac became the rage of Paris, it was introduced in New York by Delmonico's Steak House and became the most ostentatious dessert ever served at America's premier restaurant, although no longer on the menu. This is still a popular, although expensive, dessert in France and is sometimes featured at high-end restaurants in the United States.
 

Glace Balzac

(Truffle Ice Cream)
 

Ingredients
 

3&1/2 cups whipping cream
1 vanilla bean, split
3/4 cups sugar
 

8 egg yolks
3 small white truffles (cut with a truffle cutter) and juice

 
Instructions
 
  1. Combine cream, vanilla bean, and sugar in a medium saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until sugar dissolves and mixture is hot. Do not let mixture boil.
  2. Whisk egg yolks in a large bowl. While whisking, pour hot cream mixture in a small stream into the yolks. Pour custard mixture back into the pan and cook over medium heat far about 8 minutes, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon until it begins to thicken and coat the spoon. Do not let custard boil.
  3. Remove from heat and immediately  pour custard mixture back into the bowl to cool. Remove vanilla bean. Add truffle juice and shaved truffles. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
  4. When mixture is slightly chilled, process in automatic ice-cream machine according  to manufacturer' s instructions.