
Hair by Marco Santini at Tracey Mattingly. “You want to know something? There is never anything left in the bowl.”įood styling by Frances Boswell.

“Oh, I learned all about that from Kevin Sharkey, who likes to serve Ruffles with Lipton’s Onion Soup Mix made with sour cream,” she says. Even Stewart will take a dip in the low end. “If I’ve learned nothing else during my years at Town & Country,” Villas wrote, “I’ve learned that the rich and successful love and respect a great hamburger as much as an elaborate fish baked in puff pastry.” T&C’s editors today can confirm this (especially if the hamburger is served next to a martini at JG Melon), and that ossetra caviar with potato chips and crème fraîche is a must at our holiday party. "I don’t suppose any article in my career ever created such commotion as the 3,000-word treatise I devoted to the art of Southern fried chicken," James Villas said.

It’s so important to adjust to your taste.” A lot of people just follow a recipe exactly as written and then are disappointed.

For the cobbler, which is a really pretty dessert, I used all peaches because they are gorgeous right now. His is very good and crispy, but I added quite a bit of salt and pepper. “I was curious to see what Villas’s recipe for fried chicken was, because I haven’t made it. It’s like the most delicious mashed potato wrapped in these beautiful, bright green leeks,” Stewart says. “The terrine reminded me of one that chef Pierre Schaedelin (of Le Cirque) used to serve all the time at my house. Stewart chose to prepare Villas’s recipes for potato, leek, and carrot terrine fried chicken and strawberry-peach cobbler (sans strawberries). Villas abhorred the then-trendy nouvelle style of cooking, championing American staples instead ( especially Southern cuisine from his hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina). LAPOINTE CREAM MATTE CREPE FEATHER BLAZER ($2,150), SHOPLAPOINTE.COM LAFAYETTE148 NEW YORK LUXE CHARMEUSE REVERSIBLE PERLA BLOUSE ($398), LAFAYETTE148NY.COM MUNNU THE GEM PALACE BAROQUE PEARL AND POLKI DIAMOND EARRINGS, MUNNU STUDIO, 21 FROG HOLLOW FARM PEACHES, MARTHA.COM MELANIE DUNEA Stewart used fruit from Frog Hollow Farm to adapt James Villas’s peach cobbler recipe in The Town & Country Cookbook (page 492).

With cooking, as with so many other things, it is best to start with the materials at hand.
