By Lisa

Barton Rouse, the late and much-loved chef at Princeton’s Terrace Club taught me, and many of my friends how to eat well, how to eat in good company, and that food means more than sustenance. In Barton’s kitchen and dining room, food was a way to forge community, celebrate difference, and find exuberance in life. In very many ways, the idea for this blog and this book is due entirely to him.l

One of the greatest meals he ever cooked was on Valentine’s Day, for which he conjured a red & black feast and we decorated the club with scorched valentines, severed hearts, and pretty dismaying cupids.  The menu, in his honor, is below, along with a variation on his classic red & black squid ink pasta, which, alongside the whole pig he roasted once a year, might just have been one of the more exotic foods he introduced us too.   If I can find the pasta, we just might have this feast in his honor on Saturday.

From Barton’s cookbook, “Eating Ivy”:

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