ReadFin Literary Journal (Winter 2018)

Letter to Gay Bilson
Amanda Kennedy
Dear Gay,
You don’t know me, though I like to think that I know you. In
fact, I like to imagine you are my neighbour. You’d hand me a
bag of freshly-picked broad beans still warm from the sun and
tell me what to do with them. ‘Steam them lightly then douse
with a glug of the good olive oil.’ I’d bring over a recipe that I’d
cooked and was proud of. You’d implore me sit at your kitchen
table, the wood worn soft and shiny from years of use. No fancy
dining room for you (ironic as dining rooms receive no less than
six entries in your seminal book). Your table is your writing
desk, pastry bench and more. Only as I was departing would you
suggest a simple way to improve the dish.
I’m glad you are not my mother though, as we would butt heads
and things would be too loaded.
But being my neighbour would be just fine.
I can tell you appreciate quality. The first time I came to learn
about you was upon seeing your book Plenty: Digressions on
Food in my local bookstore. Its delicate duck egg blue cover and
the thick decal-edged pages were so sensual in my hands, its
essays meandering not in any timeline but according to your
own lines of thought. Through these digressions I gleaned so
much about you, from your childhood home in Melbourne to
your love of a simple congee. For five generous pages, you talk
about this rice gruel, its history and its contemporary state,
before giving us a recipe of congee to serve 250 people. I love that
only a fool would jump straight to the recipe.
Like me, you know the importance of small things. Your homage
to Sei Shonagon’s The Pillow Book in Plenty made my heart skip
a beat. As both she and you do, I also make lists of things that
please, things that should be painted or things that are rare.
Though I came to know of The Pillow Book through a movie of
the same name, I’m sure yours was a more literary discovery.
I admire you for admitting your mistakes. In a piece for The
Monthly you detailed an incident where you forgot that the
chowder you had brought to vegetarian friends contained bacon.
The fact that they ate it anyway (the husband commenting
that it reminded him of a dish from his Danish youth) perhaps
speaks of your culinary skill as much as their respect for your
friendship. Admitting our mistakes is part of showing our
humanity and our fallibility. I vow to be more human, more
fallible.
If I come across your name online, I have to click through to
the article. Your words flow easily, like a impassioned discourse
over a second glass of wine. You speak about food as a means
of bringing people together across cultures as much as around
the table. You champion knowledge of where our food comes
from and how it is produced. Greater knowledge and greater
connection to our food go hand in hand. Whether it’s an
omelette constructed from a neighbour’s eggs or apples bought
from the grower at the local Farmers’ Market, we tend to respect
food that we know more about. I am almost reverential towards
the herbs I grow, making them the star of the dish instead of
an after-thought thrown on top before serving. I visualise you
doing the same.
An autodidact like myself, your writings are littered with
references to chefs and food writers from years past who have
things to offer us still. Twentieth century writers like Jane
Grigson and Elizabeth David share equal space with older, more
canonical gastronomes such as Brillat Savarin and Escoffier.
A recipe for lemon posset is given no less respect than a more
intricate recipe for florentine biscuits. We both know that a
healthy appetite for real food, devoid of numbers or fake fats,
is key to a good life. Pastry, handmade with almost equal parts
butter and flour, is not the devil. If we wish to be healthier,
we should just eat less of it. I smile as I read this, snacking on
creamy, juicy papaya, the plate resting on an unstable tower of
books.
Though you’ve run multiple restaurants, you now live quietly
in rural South Australia. Literally miles from the competitive
restaurant world of the big cities, you’ve managed to finally be
alone. I, too, need to carve out time alone, particularly when my
day job is also in hospitality. Books and art soothe and quieten
the voices echoing in my head after a day of others’ demands.
So perhaps it is to a peaceful small town one state over that I
must relocate if we are going to be neighbours. South Australia
has such a strong, local food culture and I have loved the times
I have travelled there. But, if I’m to be honest, I’m not sure I
can move so far away from my family. My daughters have just
embarked upon adult lives of their own and I get to bake big
vegetarian lasagnes to drop around unexpectedly. My sister-inlaw
regularly phones me up with a cooking dilemma that needs
immediate answering. Also, and possibly more importantly,
what about my veggie garden? I’ve got several large fruit trees
and a bay tree which I’m not sure would survive the move. My
silverbeet patch needs harvesting every few days in this warm
weather and the potatoes won’t be ready ‘til later in the year.
So, Gay, maybe we could just be pen pals instead.
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ReadFin Literary Journal