This autumn, the film “Lee” is in cinemas, with Kate Winslet in the lead role. It tells the story of war photographer Lee Miller during World War II. There, Lee says that she is good at three things: smoking, drinking and taking a nap. Kate Winslet as Lee Miller. Photo: Ymer Media / Kimberley French The film, on the other hand, says nothing about what talent she had for food. Lee Miller spent 30 years in the kitchen as one of the cultural elite’s favorite hostesses. She was told to cook some funny food. There is even a separate cookbook with Lee Miller’s recipes (published by a Norwegian publisher). In this case, we will create the first recipe in Lee Miller’s cookbook, and TV chef Ole Martin Alfsen will get to taste the result. Incidentally, he said “wow” when I showed him a list of the ingredients. But before we cook, you must meet the uncompromising and talented Lee Miller. The war photographer During the Second World War, women did not have access to the front. Lee Miller did not find himself in this. Kate Winslet and Andy Samberg play Lee and photographer colleague David Sherman. Photo: Kimberley French She was a photographer on assignment for British Vogue and defied all the opposition she encountered. Lee documented the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris in 1944. She was also among the first to escape the German concentration camps Dachau and Buchenwald. Released prisoners stand by a pile of human bones. Photo: Lee Miller Archives Most famous is a photo taken of her on 30 April 1945, where Lee is sitting in Hitler’s private bathtub in Munich. In front of the bathtub are her muddy boots from her visit to the death camps. The iconic image of Lee in the bathtub was immortalized by her friend and colleague David E. Sherman. Lee’s photo of David in the same position did not have as wide an appeal. Photo: Lee Miller Archives On the same day that this photo was taken, Hitler took his own life in the bunker in Berlin. When the war ended, Lee’s life changed drastically. Perhaps it is correct to say that she suffered from post-traumatic stress? At least she quit as a photographer. Instead, she stood in the kitchen cooking for all the famous guests who visited her home, Farley Farm. Lee Miller’s husband, Roland Penrose, was a famous and noble artist of his time. He painted this picture in 1947, the same year that his son Antony was born. Photo: Lee Miller Archives In 1977 she died of lung cancer. The story of her life almost disappeared. But not completely. The secret in the attic It was Lee Miller’s daughter-in-law Suzanna who first discovered the boxes in the attic when Lee died. Suzanna is married to Antony Penrose, Lee Miller’s only child. Antony had had a complicated relationship with his mother growing up. It’s hard to be a kid when your mom drinks, and Lee did. Antony has said of his mother that she was a sort of functioning alcoholic when he was young. Photo: Lee Miller Archives The discovery of the boxes in the attic changed everything. They were to turn out to contain 60,000 negatives, diaries and notes that the mother had hidden away. The overwhelming material came as a shock to Antony. Lee had never told him about his dramatic life. Slowly but surely he trawled through his mother’s story. Mother’s biography Lee was born in New York in 1907 into a relatively wealthy family. The father was a hobby photographer and took an extremely large number of pictures of his daughter. When she was 19, she was discovered on the street and began her career as a photo model. Self portrait. Photo: Lee Miller Archives Lee became the “it girl” of the 1920s and graced the covers of the major fashion magazines. Eventually she got tired of being photographed. Lee wanted to take pictures himself and went to Paris, which was the mecca of art in the 1930s. There she became a muse and collaborator with the surrealist artist Man Rey, until she left him a few years later. There was always a new lover around the corner. They weren’t very hard to find. All men fell like flies for the dazzlingly beautiful Lee Miller. Picasso painted six portraits of Lee Miller. She took close to a thousand pictures of him. Photo: Lee Miller Archives During the Second World War, she took pictures at the front, in field hospitals and in the bombed-out streets. Antony sorted everything he could find into a biography of a mother he had not known. In 1985, the book “The Lives of Lee Miller” came out. Finally the world became aware of the life she had lived. And the son Antony was given a life project as a steward of his mother’s history. A Norwegian cookbook In addition to the book, an exhibition of Lee’s many photos was made. This was shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2007. One person who went to London to see this exhibition was Norwegian Karen Hagen, employed at Deichmanske bibliotek in Oslo. Karen HagenPublisherPhoto: Åslaug Birgitte Græsvold In connection with the photo exhibition, there was also an offer for a tour of Lee Miller’s old home, Farley Farm. Coincidence wanted Karen Hagen to sit and wait for a while in Lee’s old kitchen. There she looked around. Everything was just as it was when Lee was alive. Karen noticed that there were so many cookbooks on the shelves there. She also knew that Lee Miller cooked a lot, and that she had once won a sandwich competition where the prize was a three-week stay in Norway. Lee Miller was extremely interested in food and created his own recipes. Shouldn’t these become a cookbook? So coincidentally was the start of the book “Lee Miller – A Life with Food Friends & Recipes”, penned by Lee’s granddaughter Amy, and published by Karen Hagen’s small publisher Grapefrukt in 2017. Photo: Grapefrukt But what kind of food was the fearless Lee Miller made for their guests? Lee’s champagne and camembert soup (Think music from the TV kitchen.) Welcome to my kitchen. Today we are going to make a soup that TV chef Ole Martin Alfsen described as “violent and questionable” when I showed him the recipe. We agreed that Alfsen should taste the soup when it was ready. These are the ingredients needed to make Lee’s soup. Notice the amount of alcohol on the left of the picture. Everything must be in the soup, including the glass of port wine. Photo: Ole Petter Hodnungseth / news A whole bottle of champagne, a glass of port, a splash of cognac, some chicken stock, a mature Camembert cheese, five raw egg yolks and an onion (but only one then, we can’t drown the soup in vegetables either). In other words, this is not a soup for dehydrated alcoholics, children or motorists. I fried one onion and let it cook in chicken stock. Once this was done, I melted the Camembert into the mixture. It smelled strongly of mature French cheese. When the soup had cooled a little, I added the egg yolks while whisking like crazy. Then there was the alcohol. First a glass of port in the soup. Then a whole bottle of sparkling wine (I chose a cava for economic reasons). Photo: Ole Petter Hodnungseth / news The foamed grassat in the pot. The carbonation was almost driving the soup over the edge. When the mixture had calmed down a bit, I poured in brandy as the recipe indicated. Photo: Ole Petter Hodnungseth / news The soup tasted… yes… a bit funny, maybe, but what do I know about real gourmet food? Photo: Ole Petter Hodnungseth / news I poured the soup into a thermos and drove home to the chef Ole Martin Alfsen. He started laughing at the first taste. Photo: Ole Petter Hodnungseth / news – Haha, damn it, he said. – If I had been served this, I would have thought it was a joke. – Is it that bad, then? – Yes. – But she served this to Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Man Rey and all the famous surrealist artists who came to visit. – Then I would call this a surreal soup. It is as absurd and difficult to understand as surrealist art. – Would you manage to eat the whole plate? – No, then I would have had an alcohol problem. Photo: Ole Petter Hodnungseth / news – Can the recipe be saved in any way? – Yes, if you enjoy yourself and drink the bottle of wine while you prepare the food, not everything ends up in the soup. A dash of champagne will do. A little less port would also help. – But on the other hand, added Alfsen, it is a way to dissolve the mood quickly, then. Everyone gets excited about eating the appetizer. – What do you think one should drink with this? – Well, what would it be? What’s in the soup should be in the glass, said the chef. Lee’s challenges What does this soup say about Lee Miller? Photo: US Army Official Photograph She called herself a surrealist all her life because the term opened up for creativity and strange combinations. The son Antony has said that he could have green chicken and blue spaghetti for dinner. At the same time, her life was complicated. Not only was she traumatized by everything she had experienced at the front during the war, she also had major problems privately. As a child she was raped and contracted gonorrhea at the age of seven. This should never be talked about, neither when it happened nor later. As a married woman, she had to put up with the man’s mistresses and not least his ex-wife Valentine, who lived at Farley Farm for over 30 years. The two women never became close friends. In light of all this, it is easy to understand that surreal and creative cooking became Lee’s very life. Lee Miller’s food recipes are not for the faint of heart. But it certainly wasn’t her life either. The recipe for Lee Miller’s champagne and camembert soup 700 ml chicken stock 1 medium onion – finely chopped and fried in a little butter 1 bay leaf 2 teaspoons cornstarch stirred in 2 tablespoons water 200 grams ripe camembert 5 egg yolks 120 ml dry port wine 240 ml warm water 1 bottle of champagne a little cognac roasted almond flakes Cook fried onions and a bay leaf in chicken stock for 15 min. Add the cornstarch and let it boil. Pour the soup into a blender and run it fine. Add diced Camembert. So egg yolks, one at a time. Finally, port wine. Before serving, heat the soup gently while pouring in a bottle of champagne. Pepper the soup and pour over toasted almonds. Hi! If you have input or thoughts about this, or anything else – feel free to send me an e-mail. And if you have listened to the case, I am particularly interested in hearing from you (because this function is something we are testing). Want to read other things I’ve written? 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War photographer Lee Miller’s dramatic life and food recipes – Culture
