Cooking from Salvador Dali's Les Diners de Gala

We recently hosted a Surrealist dinner party in honor of a good friend's birthday, cooking the entire meal from Salvador Dali's little-known cookbook Les Diners de Gala. Written in 1971, this fabulous gastronomic work contains Dali's favorite recipes from famous Parisian cafes and his wife Gala's home cooking.

Dali's introduction states that when he was a little boy he always wanted to be a chef. At the age of 68, as an established artist, Dali created this heavy tome about his gastronomic adventures. Filled with colorful spreads and illustrations, Dali here exemplifies the starving artist. Not the artist who cannot afford to eat, but the artist hungry with passion, consuming food just as he devours art– with gusto, extravagance and panache.

While the Surreal visuals range from light and airy to bizarre and frightening, the recipes in the book are all lavish, fattening and expensive to produce. At the beginning, he opens with a Dante-esque warning:

"Les Diners de Gala is uniquely devoted to the pleasures of taste. Do not look for dietetic formulas here."

With recipe titles like "Pierced Heart" and "Ox Snouts in Puff Pastry Shells", we had trouble composing an acceptable modern menu that would not scare our guests, especially since there was one vegetarian attending the party. Almost everything seemed to be encased in gelatin or coated with expensive caviar. Below are a few dishes we thought might be a little elaborate for our guests:

Instead, we settled on a tasty salad, a beef roast with polenta balls, a green vegetable puree and a tomato pie for dessert. After the menu was planned, we sent our guests the below invitation to set the tone for the party.

We created an elegant table presentation with homemade napkin rings. Despite the small size of our Manhattan apartment (which can barely fit a table) we were able to make it look suitable. And luckily our friends are accustomed to living in tight spaces.

The salad we made was called a "Salad composed according to Alexandre Dumas." We supposed Dali's friend Dumas was often seen eating this salad at Maxim's cafe in Paris. It was a simple, delicious Parisian cafe salad. Since Dali's intention is always to create a visual gastronomic experience, the recipe instructed us to dispose the ingredients artistically. 

The beef roast was quite easy to make and delicious. We used a beef bone-in rib chop and roasted it in a hot oven on a bed of fresh herbs (bay and thyme) for about 30 minutes. The polenta balls were more labor-intensive but were an inexpensive companion for the meat that replaced needing bread at the table. A big box of corn meal can be bought for less than 2 dollars, and can make enough polenta or biscuits for countless dinners. Likewise, the green vegetable puree, made of spinach and split peas, was both delicious and inexpensive to make in large quantities.

And finally we ended the feast with Dali's homemade tomato pie. At first it seemed like it might be better suited to being an appetizer, but in the end the pie came out so sweet and tart it really could not be anything but a dessert.

The feast was a great celebration of art and food. The added interest of sitting around the cookbook together after dinner, gazing at Dali's wild, lush illustrations made it a truly memorable meal.

Dali with his wife Gala in 1945

Comments

[David W. Wilkins]

The Master---Nothing else to say

[Jack]

Awesome! Great job! I would hold I party like this if I could get my hands on that book! Its out of print and apparently impossible to find for under $200. I'm especially intrigued by the tomato pie.

[Jet Bret]

This is such a brilliant idea! I love the concept. les Dines de Gala is a book that I
ve been trying to get my hands on for years. It's getting harder to get the ever.