Cooking

Earlier, you will have ground 3 3/4 lbs of fish with a mortar and pestle-heads, tails bones, and all-and forced them through a coarse sieve. Do not use a grinder, blender, or cuisinart. The sieve of La Tour Lambert is an elegant sock of meshed copper wire, with a fitted ashwood plunger. It is kept immaculately bright. Its apertures are shrewdly gauged to crumble the bones without pulverizing the flesh. Into the strained fish,mix small amounts of salt, white pepper, nutmeg, and chopped truffles--fresh ones, if possible. (See truffle.)

Stir fish and liquid into an even paste.

Two hours before, you will have refrigerated 1 cup of the heaviest cream available. Here, of course, access to a cow is a blessing.

The breathtakingly viscid cream of La Tour Lambert is kept in specially excavated cellars. Those without one use the town chiller, in the middle depths--cool but not cold--of the cave mentioned earlier. Often I have watched the attendant women entering and emerging from that room, dusky figures in cowls, shawls, and long gray gowns, bearing earthenware jugs like offerings to a saint.

Country Cooking from Central France: Roast Boned Rolled Stuffed Shoulder of Lamb (Farce Double)