Free Cooking for Picasso by Camille Aubray

wars her parents hid the café’s best champagne from the German soldiers.”
    She leaned in to retrieve a parcel sealed in a plastic bag, then rose to her feet, clutching it to her chest like a naughty little wide-eyed girl with a secret.
    “Let’s go back to the kitchen where the light is good,” she suggested. We returned and I watched, mystified, as Mom opened the plastic bag to remove something wrapped in blue-and-silver Christmas paper, which she now deposited into my lap. “I want you to open this Christmas gift early this year—because it really came from your grandmother, not me,” she said quietly. Her eyes were bright with excitement. I tore open the wrapper, half-expecting to see some family jewels. Instead, I discovered a maroon leather-bound notebook, shaped like a ledger.
    “This belonged to your Grandmother Ondine. She gave it to me the day that you were born. It’s a kind of cookbook she wrote herself, with all her best recipes!” Mom announced.
    “It’s lovely,” I replied, baffled. I absolutely hated cooking, and my mother knew it. Every Frenchwoman, no matter how wealthy, believes that she should periodically cook for her family to prove that she excels at this domestic art. Mom was a generous and gifted chef, yet my father and siblings were indifferent to food and treated her like hired help. So I guess that’s why I’d always steered clear of kitchen work. It occurred to me now that my mother was offering this gift as a gentle hint that I should learn to cook and thus become a more traditional female, as a path to happiness.
    “At least I can give you this—for an heirloom,” Mom said apologetically, noticing my hesitation.
    Considering everything she’d told me this evening, the whole thing felt like just another kick in the pants, not a gift. A consolation prize, perhaps. But when I saw the hopeful look on her face I kissed her. This treasure obviously meant a lot to her, and I did like the feel of the notebook’s buttery soft leather cover. Curious, I turned to the first page, which had a printed box decorated with a border of grapevines, and inside it, at the
Date
line, was a scripted flourish in blue ink saying
Spring, 1936
.
    “This is Grandmother Ondine’s handwriting?” I asked, studying it closely. On the line for the
Nom,
she’d only written a letter
P
. “Who’s ‘P’?” I said, pointing to it. Mom hesitated, and a strange, conflicted look crossed her face. Then, visibly, she made up her mind and took the plunge.
    “Oh. Picasso,” she said in a low voice.
    “
Picasso!
Really?” I asked, taken aback. Mom nodded, and she went on to explain how Grandmother Ondine, at age seventeen, had transported lunch from her parents’ café to Picasso’s villa.
    “Amazing!” I responded, actually feeling goosebumps imagining the scene as I flipped through the recipes, all handwritten in French.
Bouillabaisse
and
coq au vin
and beef
miroton
and lamb
rissole
. “What else did she tell you about Picasso?” I asked, feeling all the more intrigued now.
    “Nothing,” Mom admitted. “She just gave me this book as a keepsake and told me to pass it on to you when you were old enough.” She turned to the back of the notebook where, in a leather pocket for storing mementos, Mom had tucked an envelope that was already slit open. I saw that it was posted in 1983 from
Juan-les-Pins, France
.
    “Here’s a letter that Grandmother Ondine wrote to me,” she explained. “On old stationery from when her parents ran the café. She kept this stationery for her own personal use years later, when she grew up and took over the café after her parents died.”
    Fascinated, I saw that the folded sheet of delicate white paper, deeply creased from being tucked into that envelope for so long, had an appealing black-and-grey drawing of the café professionally printed at the top of the page. The words
Café Paradis
were on the awning of its picturesque terrace.
    “And here’s a photo of