The Hemingway Cookbook, page 15
3 tablespoons butter
1 pound ground beef
Salt
Pepper
Big dash of marjoram
Big dash of oregano
½ cup dry white wine
½ cup raisins
1 cup mango or peach, fairly finely chopped
½ cup sliced celery
¼ cup sliced stuffed olives
¼ cup chopped almonds, (optional)
Slice fine and fry in plenty of butter a medium-sized onion, or more if your family is big and you are using more than a pound of beef, also shredded garlic according to your taste. Stir in the meat with salt, pepper, a big dash of marjoram and a big dash of oregano, and before the meat starts burning or sticking to the pan, add about one-half cup of dry white wine. (Here the Cubans use, instead, tomato paste and water, but I prefer this dish without tomatoes.) Let this simmer gently for a while during which you make a platter of fluffy white rice. About five minutes before serving, add to the frying-pan mixture a half cup of previously soaked raisins, a cup of fairly finely chopped mango or fresh peach, half a cup of sliced celery, a handful of sliced stuffed olives and, if you wish to be fancy, a handful of blanched, chopped almonds [blanching briefly in boiling water is only necessary if the almonds still have their skin]. Pour the frying-pan mixture on top of the rice. Very small rivulets of the juice of the meat mixture should appear around the edges of the platter, or you haven’t used enough butter, wine or fruit. Garnish it with something dark green and very crisp.
Another dessert that was an all-time favorite of Mary and Ernest’s was coconut ice cream, which she prepared and served within the half-shells of real coconuts.
Coconut Ice Cream
1¼ QUARTS ICE CREAM
2½ cups heavy cream
1½ cups coconut milk
1 vanilla bean
8 egg yolks
¾ cup sugar
In a heavy saucepan, combine the cream and coconut milk. Cut the vanilla bean in half lengthwise. Scrape the seeds into the cream mixture and add the bean. Bring the cream mixture to a boil over medium heat and set aside.
In a mixing bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar. When the cream mixture has cooled slightly, whisk about 1 cup into the egg yolks and sugar. Add this mixture to the remaining cream mixture in the saucepan. Return the saucepan to medium heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. Heat for 3-5 minutes, or until the custard reaches 175° F and coats the back of the spoon. Remove from the heat. Pour the custard into a bowl and set over a larger bowl half-filled with ice water. Cool the custard for 10 minutes, stirring often.
Cover the custard with plastic wrap, allowing the plastic to settle on the surface. Refrigerate for 2 hours. Remove the vanilla bean, transfer the custard to an ice cream maker, and freeze according to manufacturer’s instructions. When finished, scoop the ice cream into halfshells of coconut, split open with a chisel and hammer.
6
EAST AFRICA AND IDAHO
A Hunter’s Culinary Sketches
In my nocturnal dreams, I am always between 25 and 30 years old, I am irresistible to women, dogs and, on one recent occasion, to a very beautiful lioness. . . . One of the aspects of this dream that I remember was that the lioness was killing game for me exactly as she would for a male of her own species; but instead of our having to devour the meat raw, she cooked it in a most appetizing manner. She used only butter for basting the impala chops. She braised the tenderloin and served it, on the grass, in a manner worthy of the Ritz in Paris. She asked me if I wanted any vegetables, and knowing that she herself was completely nonherbivorious, I refused in order to be polite. In any case, there were no vegetables.
—From “The Christmas Gift”
At the Kujungu Camp, Tanganyika, February 1934.
(Left to right) Ben Fourie, Charles Thompson, Philip Percival, and Hemingway displaying the bounty of a hunt.
Hemingway’s father, with his deep-set eyes and sharp, clear vision, was an excellent shot and avid hunter. As young Ernest grew older in a house increasingly dominated by women, Dr. Hemingway was eager to teach his young son the ways of the wild. Ernests older sister Marcelline was also included in Ed Hemingway’s regimented training but as Ernest himself would do later in life, Ed used these shared experiences to express his love for his son in particular.
By age five, Ernest had already begun to develop a love of fishing and hunting that would last his entire life. It was not until his teens, though, that his father would graduate him from his air rifle to target practice with a .22. Ed imparted discipline and respect for the weapons to his children and shared his contempt for hunters who killed for folly. The latter point, you may recall, resulted in the unfortunate porcupine incident of 1913 with Ernest and Harold Sampson.
These early experiences brought Ernest close to his father, even if they would later grow apart in many other ways. Years later he would thank his father, in a not wholly complimentary way through the semifictional voice of Nick Adams in the short story “Fathers and Sons”:
… the quail country made him remember him as he was when Nick was a boy and he was very grateful to him for two things: fishing and shooting. His father was as sound on those two things as he was unsound on sex, for instance, and Nick was glad that it had been that way; for some one has to give you your first gun or the opportunity to get it and use it, and you have to live where there is game or fish if you are to learn about them, and now, at thirty-eight, he loved to fish and to shoot exactly as much as when he first had gone with his father.1
As with all of his great passions—the bullfights, fishing for trout or marlin, or writing well—the heightened reality of the hunt awakened in Ernest that voracious appetite for food and drink. It has been noted that his appetite was only truly piqued while hunting or fishing for marlin. We find, particularly in writing about his safaris in East Africa, detailed and enthusiastic accounts of the exotic meals and potent drinks that provided sustenance for the hunters. His hunting adventures formed in large part the legend of Hemingway that remains today. From the Kapiti Plains of East Africa to the mountains of Wyoming and Idaho, as we partake of the foods and drinks of the hunt, replete with images of great successes and mortal failures, we may yet again participate that much more fully in the Hemingway legend. Our first stop is Kenya, where Ernest and Pauline arrived in 1933 for Hemingway’s first major safari.
African Safari
Hemingway went on two major safaris to East Africa. The first, in 1933-34, resulted in The Green Hills of Africa, an ambitious effort at re-creating reality from the young and newly famous writer, as well as two of his most memorable short stories, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” The second safari, in 1953-54, ended with serious internal injuries and a fractured skull, the result of not one, but two, plane crashes.
In November 1933, Ernest and Pauline sailed from Marseilles for Mombasa, Kenya. Financed with $25,000 from Pauline’s Uncle Gus, the Hemingways hunted for seven weeks in the Great Rift Valley and the Serengeti Plain of Tanganyika. They were joined by Key West friend Charles Thompson and the English hunter Philip Percival, who once hunted with Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt. They were also joined briefly by Baron Bror von Blixen, the director of Tanganyika Guides, Ltd., who, along with Percival, served as models for Wilson in “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.”
The drama and danger of the safari brought Hemingway in touch with his own struggles with cowardice and courage. He discovered that by having confronted the former he could eventually live and hunt and work firmly rooted in the latter.2 The safari also brought out his volatile, competitive spirit, as the less experienced Thompson continually bettered Hemingway with larger kills.
The details of their safari would eventually make it into Hemingway’s fiction. The finest piece to come of the early safari and one of his most intriguing short stories was “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” Based very loosely on a tale told by Percival around their campfire, Hemingway embroidered a deliciously dark and taut story. Francis and Margot Macomber, a deeply embittered couple, are on safari with their white hunter, Wilson. Francis Macomber wallows in his cowardice, confronting it when there is nothing left to lose after Margot has betrayed him. He finds his courage in the path of a wounded and charging buffalo, but Margot ends the story with “a sudden white-hot, blinding flash.”3
FRANCIS MACOMBER’S LAST MEAL
Having bolted from a charging lion the day before, Francis must contend with the ceaseless barbs of his wife and the contemptuous silence of Wilson. Over lunch, Margot takes ample opportunity to register her distaste at her husband’s retreat:
“That’s eland he’s offering you,” Wilson said.
“They’re the big cowy things that jump like hares, aren’t they?”
“I suppose that describes them,” Wilson said.
“It’s very good meat,” Macomber said.
“Did you shoot it, Francis?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“They’re not dangerous, are they?”
“Only if they fall on you,” Wilson told her.
“I’m so glad.”
“Why not let up on the bitchery just a little, Margot,” Macomber said, cutting the eland steak and putting some mashed potato, gravy and carrot on the down-turned fork that tined through the piece of meat.4
Hunter’s Safari Steak
This recipe, adapted from The African Cookbook, utilizes a method used by Kenyan hunters for preparing game such as eland, antelope, or zebra. If eland is not available, you may substitute veal, beef, or even buffalo.
4 SERVINGS
2 pounds eland steaks
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
Salt
Pepper
½ cup dry red wine
½ cup sweet wine
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ cup tomato sauce
1½ cups mashed potatoes
1 cup mashed sweet potatoes
Chopped parsley, for garnish
Cut the meat into 4 steaks, each about ½ inch thick. Dry the steaks with a paper towel. Heat the olive oil and butter in a large skillet just to the smoking point. Add the steaks and cook for about 3 minutes on each side, adding more oil as necessary. Season the steaks with salt and pepper to taste and set aside on a warm plate.
Keep the skillet over low heat and add the wines. Deglaze the pan by stirring the wine and scraping up any browned bits that may have stuck. Add the garlic and simmer for 2 minutes. Stir in the tomato sauce and continue to simmer until the sauce has thickened.
In a large bowl, mix together the mashed potatoes and the mashed sweet potatoes. Add salt and pepper to taste. Spread the potatoes on a large serving plate. Place the steaks on top of the potatoes and pour the sauce over the steaks. Garnish with chopped parsley and serve immediately.
The second safari needed no such fictional veil to become the thing of legend. Ernest and Mary sailed from Marseilles in 1953 to hunt again with Percival, who came out of retirement to hunt with Hemingway. Ernest once again became aggressively competitive, this time with Mario Menocal, a friend from Cuba, but the drama of their dueling was nothing when compared with the accidents that would soon befall Ernest and Mary.
At the close of the safari in January 1954, the Hemingways planned to depart from Nairobi for a vacation in the Belgian Congo. Ernest arranged a flight from Nairobi airport as a belated Christmas present for Mary. Their flight plan was circuitous, allowing them ample time to view the wonders of the African landscape from above. They flew south over the Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti Plain, over the sight of Ernest and Pauline’s 1933 safari campsite. They turned north and flew over the White Nile, eventually flying east, following the Victoria Nile to the Murchison Falls. Roy Marsh, their pilot, circled the falls three times, giving Mary a spectacular view where the river plunged in a series of cataracts toward the Sudan and Egypt. On the third pass, Marsh dived to avoid a flight of ibis in their path, striking a telegraph wire and raking the plane’s tail assembly. They crash-landed three miles south-southwest of the falls. Mary suffered two broken ribs and Ernest a shoulder sprain, but otherwise they escaped serious injury.
Ernest and Mary prepare game for the safari pot.
After a night of restless sleep by a campfire, they spotted a passing riverboat. They boarded the Murchison, which was rented to John Huston during the shooting of The African Queen, and sailed to Butiaba. Upon arrival the Hemingways discovered that local officials had searched the wreckage and found no survivors. The news had quickly got out, and the world believed that Hemingway was dead.
In the early evening of that same day, they boarded another plane at the Butiaba airstrip en route to Entebbe. Upon takeoff, after barrelling down the makeshift runway, the de Havilland Rapide 12-seater promptly stopped and burst into flames. Mary and the others escaped through a kicked-out window while Ernest used his head and injured shoulder to butt his way through the port door. He had survived yet again, but not unscathed this time. His injuries included ruptured liver, spleen, and kidney, a fractured skull resulting in loss of vision in one eye and hearing in one ear, a crushed vertebra, several sprains, and first-degree burns.
The following day the world discovered that Hemingway was alive after all. Groggy and seeing double, he met the press in relatively good humor. As if the truth were not amazing enough, the press prompted the myth that the great Hemingway had emerged from the jungle sporting a bottle of gin and a bunch of bananas. The myths and the legends spread, as did the effects of his injuries. He had out-Hemingway’d himself yet again, and the world’s appetite for the legend grew accordingly.
DINNER AFTER THE HUNT
We’ve almost come to expect such drama and adventure while keeping company with Ernest. As we learned at the Finca Vigia in Cuba, we could also expect wonderful food when Mary was around. While their post-safari accidents were pure Ernest, the food they enjoyed while hunting was inspired by Mary’s culinary enthusiasm. She recalled, in her memoirs How It Was, the marvelous food they ate in the bush:
N’bebia, our cook, had once cooked at the Governor’s house, and, squatting beside the battered pots around the edge of his fire, big as a Hollywood bed, he provided us with food good enough for governors or gourmets. Lunch was usually cold roast of game we had shot, with hot baked potatoes, salad, fruit and cheese. Dinner began with a rich strained soup enlivened by onion or barley and continued with such main dishes as oxtail stew, roast Tommy, roast eland, curries of wild bird we’d shot, with such extras as grated fresh coconut, bananas, chutney, and Bombay duck, saffron rice with sauteed guinea hen, or deepdish eland pie, the pie crust, rolled out on a wine box with a wine bottle, light as feathers. With our appetites constantly whetted by excitement and by walking in the fresh air, we all ate too much and my pants accordingly shrank.5
A successful pheasant hunt.
Curry of Wild Bird
This recipe is based on a basic African curry dish with one important element added—bananas. Mary Hemingway would add small, sweet bananas to this dish to add a smooth, starchy consistency to the sauce. This habit may have grown out of her common practice of adding mangoes to many of her favorite recipes in Cuba.
4 SERVINGS
¼ cup olive oil
2 onions, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon cumin
1 teaspoon cardamom
1 cinnamon stick
4 cloves
½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon turmeric
1-inch piece of fresh ginger, sliced
½ cup tomato puree
½ cup chicken stock
4 pounds wild fowl such as pheasant, quail, or sandgrouse, cut up
3 potatoes, peeled and quartered
2 small, ripe bananas, chopped
½ cup chopped fresh cilantro
Heat the olive oil in a large skillet. Add the onions, garlic, cumin, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, red pepper, turmeric, and ginger. Stir until well mixed. Add the tomato puree and stock and simmer over low heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the birds, cover, and cook for 10 minutes. Add the potatoes and bananas and cook, covered, for 15 minutes, or until the potatoes are just tender. Add the cilantro and cook, uncovered, for 5 minutes, or to desired consistency.
A good day in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Mike Reynolds, one of Hemingway’s preeminent biographers, and his wife, Ann, visited Marty Peterson, Hemingway Society member and codirector of the 1996 International Hemingway Conference, in Boise. Marty set out to host a small dinner party with a Hemingway theme. His cousin, Bill Tate, had a small breeding herd of eland at his ranch in Grandview, Idaho. He provided the meat for a memorable meal. Eland is remarkably similar to veal and he prepared it picata style. Given N’bebia’s training at the Governor’s house, it is likely that this dish was in his vast repertoire. Many thanks to Marty Peterson for sharing this recipe.
Eland Piccata
4 SERVINGS
1 yellow onion, diced
4 green onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 pounds eland, cut into thin slices
Salt
Freshly ground pepper
All-purpose flour, for dredging
¼ cup butter
3 tablespoons dry sherry
3 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons capers, chopped
¼ cup chicken stock (optional)
Thin-cut lemon slices
¼ cup chopped Italian parsley
Sauté the yellow and green onions and garlic in olive oil until yellow onions begin to become transparent. Set aside. Pound the eland slices with a meat pounder until flat. Sprinkle them with salt and pepper to taste and dredge lightly in flour. Heat the butter in a large skillet over moderately high heat and lightly brown the eland, turning each piece once. Add the onions and garlic. Transfer the meat to a serving platter and keep in warm oven.
Place the skillet over high heat and add the sherry and lemon juice. Scrape up the brown particles in the pan. Add the capers. Allow the sauce to thicken. The chicken stock may be used to dilute the sauce or extend it if desired. Pour over the meat. Garnish with lemon slices and parsley and serve immediately.
1 pound ground beef
Salt
Pepper
Big dash of marjoram
Big dash of oregano
½ cup dry white wine
½ cup raisins
1 cup mango or peach, fairly finely chopped
½ cup sliced celery
¼ cup sliced stuffed olives
¼ cup chopped almonds, (optional)
Slice fine and fry in plenty of butter a medium-sized onion, or more if your family is big and you are using more than a pound of beef, also shredded garlic according to your taste. Stir in the meat with salt, pepper, a big dash of marjoram and a big dash of oregano, and before the meat starts burning or sticking to the pan, add about one-half cup of dry white wine. (Here the Cubans use, instead, tomato paste and water, but I prefer this dish without tomatoes.) Let this simmer gently for a while during which you make a platter of fluffy white rice. About five minutes before serving, add to the frying-pan mixture a half cup of previously soaked raisins, a cup of fairly finely chopped mango or fresh peach, half a cup of sliced celery, a handful of sliced stuffed olives and, if you wish to be fancy, a handful of blanched, chopped almonds [blanching briefly in boiling water is only necessary if the almonds still have their skin]. Pour the frying-pan mixture on top of the rice. Very small rivulets of the juice of the meat mixture should appear around the edges of the platter, or you haven’t used enough butter, wine or fruit. Garnish it with something dark green and very crisp.
Another dessert that was an all-time favorite of Mary and Ernest’s was coconut ice cream, which she prepared and served within the half-shells of real coconuts.
Coconut Ice Cream
1¼ QUARTS ICE CREAM
2½ cups heavy cream
1½ cups coconut milk
1 vanilla bean
8 egg yolks
¾ cup sugar
In a heavy saucepan, combine the cream and coconut milk. Cut the vanilla bean in half lengthwise. Scrape the seeds into the cream mixture and add the bean. Bring the cream mixture to a boil over medium heat and set aside.
In a mixing bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar. When the cream mixture has cooled slightly, whisk about 1 cup into the egg yolks and sugar. Add this mixture to the remaining cream mixture in the saucepan. Return the saucepan to medium heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. Heat for 3-5 minutes, or until the custard reaches 175° F and coats the back of the spoon. Remove from the heat. Pour the custard into a bowl and set over a larger bowl half-filled with ice water. Cool the custard for 10 minutes, stirring often.
Cover the custard with plastic wrap, allowing the plastic to settle on the surface. Refrigerate for 2 hours. Remove the vanilla bean, transfer the custard to an ice cream maker, and freeze according to manufacturer’s instructions. When finished, scoop the ice cream into halfshells of coconut, split open with a chisel and hammer.
6
EAST AFRICA AND IDAHO
A Hunter’s Culinary Sketches
In my nocturnal dreams, I am always between 25 and 30 years old, I am irresistible to women, dogs and, on one recent occasion, to a very beautiful lioness. . . . One of the aspects of this dream that I remember was that the lioness was killing game for me exactly as she would for a male of her own species; but instead of our having to devour the meat raw, she cooked it in a most appetizing manner. She used only butter for basting the impala chops. She braised the tenderloin and served it, on the grass, in a manner worthy of the Ritz in Paris. She asked me if I wanted any vegetables, and knowing that she herself was completely nonherbivorious, I refused in order to be polite. In any case, there were no vegetables.
—From “The Christmas Gift”
At the Kujungu Camp, Tanganyika, February 1934.
(Left to right) Ben Fourie, Charles Thompson, Philip Percival, and Hemingway displaying the bounty of a hunt.
Hemingway’s father, with his deep-set eyes and sharp, clear vision, was an excellent shot and avid hunter. As young Ernest grew older in a house increasingly dominated by women, Dr. Hemingway was eager to teach his young son the ways of the wild. Ernests older sister Marcelline was also included in Ed Hemingway’s regimented training but as Ernest himself would do later in life, Ed used these shared experiences to express his love for his son in particular.
By age five, Ernest had already begun to develop a love of fishing and hunting that would last his entire life. It was not until his teens, though, that his father would graduate him from his air rifle to target practice with a .22. Ed imparted discipline and respect for the weapons to his children and shared his contempt for hunters who killed for folly. The latter point, you may recall, resulted in the unfortunate porcupine incident of 1913 with Ernest and Harold Sampson.
These early experiences brought Ernest close to his father, even if they would later grow apart in many other ways. Years later he would thank his father, in a not wholly complimentary way through the semifictional voice of Nick Adams in the short story “Fathers and Sons”:
… the quail country made him remember him as he was when Nick was a boy and he was very grateful to him for two things: fishing and shooting. His father was as sound on those two things as he was unsound on sex, for instance, and Nick was glad that it had been that way; for some one has to give you your first gun or the opportunity to get it and use it, and you have to live where there is game or fish if you are to learn about them, and now, at thirty-eight, he loved to fish and to shoot exactly as much as when he first had gone with his father.1
As with all of his great passions—the bullfights, fishing for trout or marlin, or writing well—the heightened reality of the hunt awakened in Ernest that voracious appetite for food and drink. It has been noted that his appetite was only truly piqued while hunting or fishing for marlin. We find, particularly in writing about his safaris in East Africa, detailed and enthusiastic accounts of the exotic meals and potent drinks that provided sustenance for the hunters. His hunting adventures formed in large part the legend of Hemingway that remains today. From the Kapiti Plains of East Africa to the mountains of Wyoming and Idaho, as we partake of the foods and drinks of the hunt, replete with images of great successes and mortal failures, we may yet again participate that much more fully in the Hemingway legend. Our first stop is Kenya, where Ernest and Pauline arrived in 1933 for Hemingway’s first major safari.
African Safari
Hemingway went on two major safaris to East Africa. The first, in 1933-34, resulted in The Green Hills of Africa, an ambitious effort at re-creating reality from the young and newly famous writer, as well as two of his most memorable short stories, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” The second safari, in 1953-54, ended with serious internal injuries and a fractured skull, the result of not one, but two, plane crashes.
In November 1933, Ernest and Pauline sailed from Marseilles for Mombasa, Kenya. Financed with $25,000 from Pauline’s Uncle Gus, the Hemingways hunted for seven weeks in the Great Rift Valley and the Serengeti Plain of Tanganyika. They were joined by Key West friend Charles Thompson and the English hunter Philip Percival, who once hunted with Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt. They were also joined briefly by Baron Bror von Blixen, the director of Tanganyika Guides, Ltd., who, along with Percival, served as models for Wilson in “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.”
The drama and danger of the safari brought Hemingway in touch with his own struggles with cowardice and courage. He discovered that by having confronted the former he could eventually live and hunt and work firmly rooted in the latter.2 The safari also brought out his volatile, competitive spirit, as the less experienced Thompson continually bettered Hemingway with larger kills.
The details of their safari would eventually make it into Hemingway’s fiction. The finest piece to come of the early safari and one of his most intriguing short stories was “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” Based very loosely on a tale told by Percival around their campfire, Hemingway embroidered a deliciously dark and taut story. Francis and Margot Macomber, a deeply embittered couple, are on safari with their white hunter, Wilson. Francis Macomber wallows in his cowardice, confronting it when there is nothing left to lose after Margot has betrayed him. He finds his courage in the path of a wounded and charging buffalo, but Margot ends the story with “a sudden white-hot, blinding flash.”3
FRANCIS MACOMBER’S LAST MEAL
Having bolted from a charging lion the day before, Francis must contend with the ceaseless barbs of his wife and the contemptuous silence of Wilson. Over lunch, Margot takes ample opportunity to register her distaste at her husband’s retreat:
“That’s eland he’s offering you,” Wilson said.
“They’re the big cowy things that jump like hares, aren’t they?”
“I suppose that describes them,” Wilson said.
“It’s very good meat,” Macomber said.
“Did you shoot it, Francis?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“They’re not dangerous, are they?”
“Only if they fall on you,” Wilson told her.
“I’m so glad.”
“Why not let up on the bitchery just a little, Margot,” Macomber said, cutting the eland steak and putting some mashed potato, gravy and carrot on the down-turned fork that tined through the piece of meat.4
Hunter’s Safari Steak
This recipe, adapted from The African Cookbook, utilizes a method used by Kenyan hunters for preparing game such as eland, antelope, or zebra. If eland is not available, you may substitute veal, beef, or even buffalo.
4 SERVINGS
2 pounds eland steaks
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
Salt
Pepper
½ cup dry red wine
½ cup sweet wine
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ cup tomato sauce
1½ cups mashed potatoes
1 cup mashed sweet potatoes
Chopped parsley, for garnish
Cut the meat into 4 steaks, each about ½ inch thick. Dry the steaks with a paper towel. Heat the olive oil and butter in a large skillet just to the smoking point. Add the steaks and cook for about 3 minutes on each side, adding more oil as necessary. Season the steaks with salt and pepper to taste and set aside on a warm plate.
Keep the skillet over low heat and add the wines. Deglaze the pan by stirring the wine and scraping up any browned bits that may have stuck. Add the garlic and simmer for 2 minutes. Stir in the tomato sauce and continue to simmer until the sauce has thickened.
In a large bowl, mix together the mashed potatoes and the mashed sweet potatoes. Add salt and pepper to taste. Spread the potatoes on a large serving plate. Place the steaks on top of the potatoes and pour the sauce over the steaks. Garnish with chopped parsley and serve immediately.
The second safari needed no such fictional veil to become the thing of legend. Ernest and Mary sailed from Marseilles in 1953 to hunt again with Percival, who came out of retirement to hunt with Hemingway. Ernest once again became aggressively competitive, this time with Mario Menocal, a friend from Cuba, but the drama of their dueling was nothing when compared with the accidents that would soon befall Ernest and Mary.
At the close of the safari in January 1954, the Hemingways planned to depart from Nairobi for a vacation in the Belgian Congo. Ernest arranged a flight from Nairobi airport as a belated Christmas present for Mary. Their flight plan was circuitous, allowing them ample time to view the wonders of the African landscape from above. They flew south over the Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti Plain, over the sight of Ernest and Pauline’s 1933 safari campsite. They turned north and flew over the White Nile, eventually flying east, following the Victoria Nile to the Murchison Falls. Roy Marsh, their pilot, circled the falls three times, giving Mary a spectacular view where the river plunged in a series of cataracts toward the Sudan and Egypt. On the third pass, Marsh dived to avoid a flight of ibis in their path, striking a telegraph wire and raking the plane’s tail assembly. They crash-landed three miles south-southwest of the falls. Mary suffered two broken ribs and Ernest a shoulder sprain, but otherwise they escaped serious injury.
Ernest and Mary prepare game for the safari pot.
After a night of restless sleep by a campfire, they spotted a passing riverboat. They boarded the Murchison, which was rented to John Huston during the shooting of The African Queen, and sailed to Butiaba. Upon arrival the Hemingways discovered that local officials had searched the wreckage and found no survivors. The news had quickly got out, and the world believed that Hemingway was dead.
In the early evening of that same day, they boarded another plane at the Butiaba airstrip en route to Entebbe. Upon takeoff, after barrelling down the makeshift runway, the de Havilland Rapide 12-seater promptly stopped and burst into flames. Mary and the others escaped through a kicked-out window while Ernest used his head and injured shoulder to butt his way through the port door. He had survived yet again, but not unscathed this time. His injuries included ruptured liver, spleen, and kidney, a fractured skull resulting in loss of vision in one eye and hearing in one ear, a crushed vertebra, several sprains, and first-degree burns.
The following day the world discovered that Hemingway was alive after all. Groggy and seeing double, he met the press in relatively good humor. As if the truth were not amazing enough, the press prompted the myth that the great Hemingway had emerged from the jungle sporting a bottle of gin and a bunch of bananas. The myths and the legends spread, as did the effects of his injuries. He had out-Hemingway’d himself yet again, and the world’s appetite for the legend grew accordingly.
DINNER AFTER THE HUNT
We’ve almost come to expect such drama and adventure while keeping company with Ernest. As we learned at the Finca Vigia in Cuba, we could also expect wonderful food when Mary was around. While their post-safari accidents were pure Ernest, the food they enjoyed while hunting was inspired by Mary’s culinary enthusiasm. She recalled, in her memoirs How It Was, the marvelous food they ate in the bush:
N’bebia, our cook, had once cooked at the Governor’s house, and, squatting beside the battered pots around the edge of his fire, big as a Hollywood bed, he provided us with food good enough for governors or gourmets. Lunch was usually cold roast of game we had shot, with hot baked potatoes, salad, fruit and cheese. Dinner began with a rich strained soup enlivened by onion or barley and continued with such main dishes as oxtail stew, roast Tommy, roast eland, curries of wild bird we’d shot, with such extras as grated fresh coconut, bananas, chutney, and Bombay duck, saffron rice with sauteed guinea hen, or deepdish eland pie, the pie crust, rolled out on a wine box with a wine bottle, light as feathers. With our appetites constantly whetted by excitement and by walking in the fresh air, we all ate too much and my pants accordingly shrank.5
A successful pheasant hunt.
Curry of Wild Bird
This recipe is based on a basic African curry dish with one important element added—bananas. Mary Hemingway would add small, sweet bananas to this dish to add a smooth, starchy consistency to the sauce. This habit may have grown out of her common practice of adding mangoes to many of her favorite recipes in Cuba.
4 SERVINGS
¼ cup olive oil
2 onions, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon cumin
1 teaspoon cardamom
1 cinnamon stick
4 cloves
½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon turmeric
1-inch piece of fresh ginger, sliced
½ cup tomato puree
½ cup chicken stock
4 pounds wild fowl such as pheasant, quail, or sandgrouse, cut up
3 potatoes, peeled and quartered
2 small, ripe bananas, chopped
½ cup chopped fresh cilantro
Heat the olive oil in a large skillet. Add the onions, garlic, cumin, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, red pepper, turmeric, and ginger. Stir until well mixed. Add the tomato puree and stock and simmer over low heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the birds, cover, and cook for 10 minutes. Add the potatoes and bananas and cook, covered, for 15 minutes, or until the potatoes are just tender. Add the cilantro and cook, uncovered, for 5 minutes, or to desired consistency.
A good day in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Mike Reynolds, one of Hemingway’s preeminent biographers, and his wife, Ann, visited Marty Peterson, Hemingway Society member and codirector of the 1996 International Hemingway Conference, in Boise. Marty set out to host a small dinner party with a Hemingway theme. His cousin, Bill Tate, had a small breeding herd of eland at his ranch in Grandview, Idaho. He provided the meat for a memorable meal. Eland is remarkably similar to veal and he prepared it picata style. Given N’bebia’s training at the Governor’s house, it is likely that this dish was in his vast repertoire. Many thanks to Marty Peterson for sharing this recipe.
Eland Piccata
4 SERVINGS
1 yellow onion, diced
4 green onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 pounds eland, cut into thin slices
Salt
Freshly ground pepper
All-purpose flour, for dredging
¼ cup butter
3 tablespoons dry sherry
3 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons capers, chopped
¼ cup chicken stock (optional)
Thin-cut lemon slices
¼ cup chopped Italian parsley
Sauté the yellow and green onions and garlic in olive oil until yellow onions begin to become transparent. Set aside. Pound the eland slices with a meat pounder until flat. Sprinkle them with salt and pepper to taste and dredge lightly in flour. Heat the butter in a large skillet over moderately high heat and lightly brown the eland, turning each piece once. Add the onions and garlic. Transfer the meat to a serving platter and keep in warm oven.
Place the skillet over high heat and add the sherry and lemon juice. Scrape up the brown particles in the pan. Add the capers. Allow the sauce to thicken. The chicken stock may be used to dilute the sauce or extend it if desired. Pour over the meat. Garnish with lemon slices and parsley and serve immediately.
