The Queen of Entrees, Restored

Very interesting recipe. Dish looks fun to make and tasty. This is why I read the NYT food section - unique stories available nowhere else. Nice job, thank you!

Very interesting piece. Thanks Tamar! Maybe the interested reader might appreciate a related article appeared in the New Yorker (29 july 2013) in which this entree was recreated by Daniel Bouloud. Some of the open questions from that reading found clues here.

Sounds like a delicious entree--redolent of all things yummy: vegetables and meat! However, I can't imagine eating this--or any similarly substantial dish--without a glass of wine. Yes, Tamar's brief reference to the monks' wine was appreciated. Why did they drink wine? For numerous reasons, of course. But the best one is that wine--which is half your meal if you truly appreciate flavor--makes food taste better. (Mea culpa: I'm a winemaker.) The French figured this out a long time ago. Happily, Americans are finally starting to catch on. But we still have much progress to make.

Nice job on this Tamar. It is your very thought process that I use to make updates to classic recipes to accommodate my larder and mood. I believe that to successfully update an old recipe, one should have a complete appreciation of the history and technique of the original. If nothing else, it quiets critics who question the connection to the original recipe. Just think how much grief BBQ and pizza cooks must face from nearly every person who thinks there is only one acceptable version of those mediums.

This dish was served at Craig Claiborne's legendary (or infamous!) $4000
dinner at Chez Denis in Paris in 1974. It did include game, and he didn't think that it was perfectly prepared.

I submitted a comment yesterday which seems not to have gone through. I do not see where the parmesan goes into the recipe. Also would love if anyone knows how to make an asparagus spear into a rose, which is mentioned in the original old versions.

A superb article!
One is always flabbergasted by how the names of some beverages and dishes get intertwined.
As a dyed-in-the-wool omnivore, I was pleased to read that this dietetic regime, rather than phytophagy or vegetarianism, was approved by Saint Augustine. What was good for Him, must be good enough for us.

The first Four Seasons Restaurant cookbook has a chartreuse of vegetables i made several times many many years ago. it was always fun to bring to the table, as guests were impressed. may have to give this one a try. And are these the same Carthusians who make Green Chartreuse? the drink of the devil, it is.

ok, I am desperate to know how to turn asparagus into a rose. I can never have enough asparagus, even if I make it into decorations around the finished chartreuse. I make that lovely cabbage shaped chocolate cake often enough to see this as a themed meal in my future:)
Also where did the parmesan go in the recipe. Am I just missing it?

Vegetarianism became heresy to Protestants, because it had such an ancient pedigree in Christianity. From the fourth century on, ascetics are lauded for vegetarianism, and Eastern Christians continue to keep many vegan fasts. The Calmoldese revived the Eastern practices in the eleventh century, because they held the Eastern practices as more indicative of ancient customs. With the Crusades of the twelfth century, western Europeans brought the sensibility back and it inspired the new Carthusian order.

It is true that Paul chided some Corinthians for their superior attitude about not eating meat sacrificed to idols. The early church also rejected groups that made veganism and celibacy theological points of a dualist philosophy. However, Augustine was just one voice among many until his dominance in eighth-century theology. Christianity broadly supported vegetarianism as simply, wholesome living until the sixteenth century.

In another Time - Life book, "Fresh Ways with Terrrines and Pates," the recipe for Cabbage Stuffed with Chestnuts, Chard and Bacon looks remarkably like your Chartreuse.