She made her entrance as a food writer more than 30 years ago with her fabulous recipes for Vogue. Now Arabella Boxer is bowing out. In this, her last piece, she looks back on her career and pays tribute to her long-time collaborator, photographer Tessa Traeger, whose beautiful images are featured here.
Looking back on 35 years of food writing, I can see that the most rewarding years were those I spent working for Vogue with Tessa Traeger.
My career had started almost by chance when, in 1964, my then husband Mark Boxer had an idea for a cookbook cut in three horizontal sections, using stiff paper on a spiral binding - this enabled the reader to assemble a three-course meal on one spread. Its title, First Slice Your Cookbook, was thought up by Mark, who also designed the book. (A revised version has recently been published by Grub Street.)
A colour-coding system was incorporated to help beginners to plan well-balanced menus and avoid the over-rich meals that were a feature of the time. British cooks were still revelling in an abundance of materials that had not been freely available since before the war. Double cream, unsalted butter, white flour and unlimited eggs were a welcome treat, for food rationing had lasted until 1954. By 1964, four of Elizabeth David's books had been published - Mediterranean Food, French Country Cooking, Italian Food and French Provincial Cooking - and these, together with the reappearance of imports such as olive oil, saffron and garlic, led to the growing popularity of such dishes as fish soup with rouille, ratatouille, quiche and piperade. So an uneasy partnership grew up in our kitchens, where the rich and creamy egg dishes of our prewar cuisine vied with the oil-based dishes of Mediterranean France.
While I enjoyed the celebration of food as much as anyone, I was appalled by the overuse of rich ingredients. Many of our contemporaries enjoyed giving dinner parties, but I was depressed by the sameness of the menus. Then, as now, certain dishes were so popular as to be ubiquitous. A typical dinner-party menu of that era might comprise egg mousse; boeuf en daube; Bleu de Bresse and crème br�lée with grapes. Having consumed a meal like this, plus black coffee and copious quantities of red wine, I was often laid low with liver attacks for days afterwards. Much as I liked these dishes on their own, when eaten together they were too much. I learnt to cope by refusing cheese, coffee, chocolates and often red wine as well, for I found these extras were more than I could manage. So, in First Slice, I tried to persuade cooks to plan their meals so as to include no more than one 'rich' dish at a time.
I was then still in my twenties and had as yet done nothing of import: I had travelled a fair amount, lived briefly in Paris, Rome and New York, gone to art school and had a few short-term jobs. I had been married for eight years and had two children. I loved to cook, but had never envisaged making a career out of it. Yet after First Slice was published, I found myself launched as a food writer.
The book was a success, and I was asked to do a sequel called A Second Slice. Then Beatrix Miller, then editor of Vogue and a good friend, asked me to succeed Robert Carrier as the magazine's food writer. Having long aspired to work on Vogue, I jumped at the chance. But after two years, I ran out of ideas and had to leave.
Seven years later, Beatrix persuaded me to return. As a final inducement she added: "And you won't have to worry about the photographs - we'll look after all that." But this was no longer what I wanted, for in the interim I had met Tessa Traeger. Tessa was already doing still-life photography for Vogue, though, so Beatrix was only too happy to agree when I asked if we might work together. This arrangement was to last for 16 years, encompassing more than 200 different projects and 12 working trips.
Working relationships between writers and photographers are rare, perhaps because the question of balance, as in all creative partnerships, is a tricky one. In our case, Tessa was usually the dominant partner, but her ideas were so original and her approach so inspired that I was happy to fall in with them.
Tessa has a theory that the English don't like you to take your work too seriously, or at least be seen to do so, whereas the French value and admire serious endeavour, even when it is applied to what might be considered relatively minor things. She and I were both firmly on the side of the French in this regard.
We became friends, and loved working together, especially on our trips abroad. I became good at organising these, and would usually go two or three days ahead to pave the way and prepare things for Tessa. I learnt to see things with her eyes and to evaluate what would work visually. I also learnt to be patient - as I stood for an hour by a Venetian canal in February while Tessa composed a still life in a gondola - and to be adaptable.
Meeting up with Tessa - who is still creating award-winning images - recently after a gap of a few years, I felt all over again the sense of fun and excitement that I used to enjoy in her company as we sat in her studio discussing a new project. I know that without the constant stimulus and support that she provided I would never have lasted another 16 years at Vogue.
Food fashions have changed since 1964: we are more concerned with eating wisely, using oil rather than butter and cutting down on cream and rich food. The unctuous sauces of French haute cuisine no longer seem desirable; nouvelle cuisine helped us break that habit if it did little else. Nevertheless, if you hanker after the rich foods of your youth, or if you're planning a retro dinner party, then my recipes for a Sixties menu should help reel in the years. Just don't blame me if you need to reach for the Alka Seltzer afterwards.