Jane Le Besque talks about Neolithic cooking

Artist Jane Le BesqueBritish artist Jane Le Besque lives in France, not far from Geneva, with her husband and three children. Her ties to Switzerland include exhibits of her work in Swiss galleries, and the fact that her husband works for an international organization in Geneva.

While her successful career as a painter, creator of artist books and, recently, designer of a series of dinner plates, is documented on her website, www.janelebesque.com, her passion for cooking comes through only fleetingly on the site.

So I asked her about her penchant for what she calls ‘Neolithic’ cuisine using cereals, vegetables, and even flowers as her main ingredients enhanced by gathered foods like nuts and berries, with meat and dairy products playing secondary roles.

From her replies to my questions it became apparent that what she calls ‘Neolithic’ has a very definite grounding in the actual pre-historic era, but is also a powerful mix of associations that feeds the depths of her imagination, a rich and potent soup into which she stirs the magic and mystique of fertility, rites and rituals, the elements and seasons, the passage of time and flicker of ancestral spirits. 

What is Neolithic cooking?

As an artist I have a very imaginative view of pre-history, a vision that I’m sure would make any specialist squirm! My understanding of Neolithic, or ‘New’ Stone Age, cooking is set in the British Isles around 4000-2000 B.C., when people abandoned the hunter-gatherer tradition with its diet of fresh fish, hare, venison, forest mushrooms, wild garlic, blackberries and wild strawberries, eggs… and became farmers. Diet changed in a basic way then. Although it would have included some game and gathered foods, Neolithic cooking revolved mainly around cereals, gruel, and yeast-free breads. They dried meat, and made stew possibly flavored with bitter, fibrous carrots which had to be pulverized as otherwise indigestible and perhaps sweetened with meadow herbs. Fruit like a kind of sour apple was also a staple. I find it interesting that porridge and ale laced with hallucinogens were given to priests and kings who were sacrificed after their last supper. Maybe these sacrifices were a way of returning the grains and ale to the land, gestures of insemination as well as offerings to the goddesses and gods.

How did you get interested in pre-history?

I mention in the introduction of my cookbook Un soufflé de pollen that as a child I saw Raquel Welch in the film One Million Years B.C. and from then on fantasized about the Paleolithic era [preceding 10,000 B.C.]. I spent much of my childhood hiding in the marshes near Burwash where my family lived, making clothes from reeds and gathering nuts. I only returned home when I got hungry. But I didn’t turn into a Raquel Welch and so stopped dreaming. Aged 11, Joyce Reason’s Bran the Bronze Smith: A Tale of the Bronze Age in the British Isles was one of my favorite books. Then one day I borrowed The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion by Sir James George Frazer from the school library and realized that there were many alternatives to the school education I had to that point received. A Methodist School for Young Ladies is enough to say for you to imagine just how my education was. Later, at the birth of my first child, I experienced the sensation of needing to know who my distant ancestors were, where they came from, how they lived. I imagined myself as a first bacteria, a first life form and from there borrowed the shape of all creatures up to the day when I stood upright. I can now situate in time the dinosaurs from myself, and realize that Loanna, played by Raquel Welch, was on the wrong film set.

Why did Neolithic cooking appeal to you?

I think part of it was that the first ceramic vessels were made in the Neolithic era. Then I realized that it was the food these ceramics contained that interested me. It’s now reached the point where I see pre-history and history flowing from any plate of food: cereals from the Neolithic farmer, butter from the Celts, sweet chestnuts, olive oil and herbs from the Romans, spices, exotic fruits, sugar and potatoes from the travels of Christopher Columbus…

How have you developed Neolithic cuisine in your own cooking over the years?

My cooking is developed from the notion that a fruit or vegetable grown in the garden or picked in the woods tastes much better than one bought under plastic from the super market. Apart from being free from all the artificial chemicals and aesthetic treatments that our food is put through to make it as seductive as possible (at the price of taste, and putting our health at risk), fresh produce, or gathered food - say, wild ripe raspberries from a mountain side, shared with others in memory of our ancestors - offers a much richer experience.

Tell me about your new cookbook, Un soufflé de pollen, published in 2007, which you illustrated and wrote in both your native language, English, and adopted language, French. In the book, I believe you were exploring the erotic side of food?

It is not an erotic cookbook, although some recipes do have earthy connotations which you get or not. A soufflé is a rising mound, a belly. Pollen - the meaning is obvious. I would say that the recipes revolve around childhood, virginity, passing into adulthood, old age and rejuvenation. Other recipes in the book, such as ‘Christophe’s wine and cheese sandwich’, are in memory of times spent with friends (may I say platonic occasions before I get in trouble with their wives).

Are the recipes your own, and are they what you would describe as Neolithic?

Yes, all the recipes are my own and I would describe them as close to the Neolithic as Marie-Antoinette was to being a farmer. [The French queen (1755-1793) had an ersatz farm built where she could playact the rustic life.] They are a romantic vision of this time. For example, I have a recipe for plum ice cream; I don’t really think that the people were making ice cream, although they did freeze food as a means of conservation, or food accidently froze and so was conserved. My vision of them going out on a wintry night to stir the ice cream before it crystallizes is perhaps slightly removed from reality. The ingredients are not totally faithful to the time either. Un soufflé de pollen is really a catalogue of my paintings with recipes. I never imagined that it would find its way on to the shelves of Badiane [a specialist in books about world food and wine] in Lyon, be selected for the Eugénie Brazier Prize [Brazier was a great French chef; the award is given to female cookbook writers in her memory] or be offered to [French filmmaker] Claude Chabrol as an official prize.

If someone wants to buy your cookbook, how can they order it?

They can order the book from Badiane in Lyon (www.badiane.fr), or directly through my website www.janelebesque.com for 17 Euros plus postage.

Can you share a simple recipe?

Young Hawthorne Leaf Sausages

A handful of: Young hawthorne leaves

Pine nuts

Walnuts

Raisins

Hazelnuts

Coriander (chopped)

Mint (chopped)

Mild cheese

Broad beans (chopped)

Lemon juice

Salt

Chop the hawthorne leaves finely, putting half aside. Grind the nuts; chop the raisins, mint and coriander. Blend the cheese with the broad beans and mix in the other ingredients with salt, pepper and lemon to taste. Form the paste into sausage shapes and roll in the remaining hawthorne leaves so that they resemble ten fat green fingers.

[Harvest the hawthorne leaf-buds in early spring, preferably from bushes in your own garden.]

Photo of Jane Le Besque: copyright Philippe Tarbouriech.