Life Is Meals: A Food Lover's Book of Days (with Recipes)

MEALS ARE EVERYTHING · EIFFEL TOWER

DINNER WITH LORD BYRON · COFFEE

TWELFTH NIGHT · SALT

RUTH CLEVELAND · IMPORTANCE OF MEALS

CREAMED CHIPPED BEEF · TALLEYRAND · PINEAPPLE

WOMEN AT TABLE · FORKS · CORDON BLEU

GIVING A DINNER PARTY I

GIVING A DINNER PARTY II

GIVING A DINNER PARTY III

GIVING A DINNER PARTY IV

GIVING A DINNER PARTY V

GIVING A DINNER PARTY VI

JORIE GRAHAM ON LOVE · NEVER TOGETHER

GRAND DICTIONNAIRE DE CUISINE · AL DENTE

APHRODISIACS · JASON EPSTEIN’S KITCHEN

COOKBOOKS · DE GONCOURT

SPAGHETTI ALLA CARBONARA

WINE · WHAT WITH WHAT

MEALS ARE EVERYTHING

The meal is the essential act of life. It is the habitual ceremony, the long record of marriage, the school for behavior, the prelude to love. Among all peoples and in all times, every significant event in life—be it wedding, triumph, or birth—is marked by a meal or the sharing of food or drink. The meal is the emblem of civilization. What would one know of life as it should be lived or nights as they should be spent apart from meals?

EIFFEL TOWER

The Eiffel Tower was intended to stand for only twenty years when it was built for the 1889 World’s Fair. Though it always had its admirers, others scornfully referred to it as the tallest flagpole in existence. Guy de Maupassant called it a giant and disgraceful skeleton and ate his lunch underneath it every day, because that was the only place in the city where he didn’t have to look at it.

When it came time to pull it down in 1910, it was saved by the development of the telegraph, which required a tower. Ten years later, it barely survived a request from the construction industry to melt it down for its iron. Only in 1964 did the French decide to keep it for good, designating it an historic structure. Maupassant, if his royalties were sufficient, could avoid looking at it today by dining at one of the most famous restaurants in Paris, the Jules Verne, stylish and animated, often booked months in advance for its food as well as its exceptional view from the second tier of the tower, more than four hundred feet above where he used to have his lunch.

DINNER WITH LORD BYRON

Samuel Rogers (1763–1855) was a wealthy minor poet whose elegant home on St. James Street in London became a gathering place for his literary friends, including William Wordsworth and Charles Lamb. In his book Table Talk, Rogers recalls first meeting Lord Byron when it was arranged he should come to dinner:

"When we sat down to dinner I asked Byron if he would take soup? No, he never took soup. Would he take fish? No, he never took fish. Presently I asked if he would take some mutton? No, he never ate mutton. I then asked if he would take a glass of wine? No, he never tasted wine.

"It was now necessary to inquire what he did eat and drink; and the answer was, nothing but hard biscuits and sodawater. Unfortunately, neither hard biscuits nor sodawater were at hand; and he dined upon potatoes bruised down on his plate and drenched with vinegar. My guests stayed till very late discussing the merits of Walter Scott and Joanna Baillie.

"Some days after, meeting Hobhouse, I said to him, ‘How long will Lord Byron persevere in his present diet?’ He replied, ‘Just about as long as you continue to notice it.’

I did not then know, what I now know to be a fact—that Byron, after leaving my house, had gone to a club in St. James’s Street, and eaten a hearty meat-supper.

COFFEE

They have in Turkey a drink called Coffee … as Black as Soot, and of a Strong Scent … which they take, beaten into Powder, in Water, as Hot as they can Drink it; and they take it, and sit at it in their Coffee Houses, which are like our Taverns.

—FRANCIS BACON

Some forty years after Bacon’s death, coffee made its way from Turkey to France with the sultan’s ambassador to the court of Louis XIV, where Mme de Sévigné predicted, with something less than her usual acuity, There are two things the French will never swallow—Racine’s poetry, and coffee. She lived long enough to find that she was wrong about both.

The coffee tree, a small evergreen with fragrant white flowers and dark red pods, each containing two beans, is thought to be native to Ethiopia, and East Africa remains a producer, behind South America, where Brazil is the leader. The beverage was made of the roasted, crushed beans and probably developed in Arabia. It then moved northward to Egypt and Turkey, where it became so essential to daily life that in Constantinople, denying a wife her coffee gave her grounds for divorce. When it arrived in Europe and the Americas in the 1600s, it was the thick, unfiltered liquid still served in Turkey, Greece, and the Middle East. Gradually, as it traveled, its preparation was adapted to the taste of its public by filtering or adding milk, sugar, or flavorings.

Always valued for its stimulating effect, coffee contains more caffeine than any other drink. There are about 110 to 150 milligrams of caffeine in a cup of coffee made by the drip method and about 65 to 125 in a percolated cup, nearly twice the amount found in tea. Espresso, though stronger in taste because it is more concentrated, actually has less caffeine than regular coffee. Decaffeinated, which has been around for one hundred years, accounts for about twenty percent of coffee sales in the United States.

Balzac was in the habit of drinking up to thirty cups a day while writing for twelve-hour stretches, producing his vast body of fiction as he tried to scramble out of debt. Dead at fifty, the cause wasn’t coffee, though medical authorities today more or less agree that four cups a day is about as many as most people can consume before experiencing the side effects of excessive caffeine.

TWELFTH NIGHT

Twelfth Night, the twelfth night after Christmas, is the eve of Epiphany, marking the arrival of the Three Wise Men who had seen the star on the night Jesus was born and followed it to Bethlehem.

The church didn’t officially designate December 25 as the birthday of Jesus until 336 A.D., and chose the time of year to coincide with already immensely popular pagan celebrations. Twelfth Night, for example, grew out of much older rituals that marked the winter solstice, when the days started getting longer again, and the ancients, for twelve days, celebrated the return of the sun.

Some of the customs practiced by the pagans during this season are still part of post-Christmas celebrations all over the world, including a Twelfth Night cake. A bean was baked into the cake, and whoever got that slice became king for the night. Today in France and Spain, the galette des rois, cake of kings, and the gastel à fève orroriz, cake with the king’s bean, are still served, during the holidays, as is the Dreikönigskuchen, the three kings’ cake, in Switzerland and Germany, conferring good luck on the one who gets the special token.

SALT

Salt appears in the Bible as well as in the works of Homer, who described nations as poor when they did not use salt in their food, and the word itself is found in almost identical form in many languages: sel, sal, salz, sale, sol’, salt, etc. The word salary comes from the salt that was part of Roman soldiers’ pay or that they bought with a special allowance.

Mined or drawn from seawater by evaporation, salt has been essential to life, as well as to the taste of food, which it enhances, bringing out the deep-lying flavors. It dehydrates certain vegetables—tomatoes, cucumbers, and especially eggplant—and brightens the color of others—spinach and green beans if it is in the cooking water. Through thousands of years it has been crucial to the preservation of food.

When roasting or sautéing meat, it has long been held that salt should be used only after browning so that the juices will not be drawn out, though not all cooks agree. It should always be used in pasta water, and a pinch of it, oddly enough, brings out the sweetness of pineapple and grapefruit.

About ¼ ounce is the daily human requirement, although the modern diet may provide several times this amount, and medical advice has been to keep salt intake low, particularly for older people and those with certain health problems such as high blood pressure or diseases of the heart, liver, or kidneys.

Rock salt comes from mining, and sea salt—which chefs often prefer for its taste—from evaporation. Kosher salt has no additives, but table salt often does, to provide iodine and to prevent sticking due to dampness.

The best smell is bread, the best taste is salt, Graham Greene wrote, adding, and the best love is that of children.

RUTH CLEVELAND

1904. Ruth Cleveland, daughter of President Grover Cleveland, dies on this day at age thirteen of diphtheria, four years before her father. They lie near one another in Princeton Cemetery in New Jersey Born between her father’s two terms, she had been adored by the public, and a candy bar was even named for her: Baby Ruth.

IMPORTANCE OF MEALS

The edicts of a Chinese emperor are said to have begun, The world is based on agriculture, and food has shaped human society since the very beginning. Eating is a process more vital than sex and the need more recurrent. The rhythm of working and eating defines the life of every individual, and the dizzying edifice made up of all the civilizations and savage tribes of history is based on food.

Primitive man did not eat at certain hours but simply when hungry. Gradually a regularity developed. Families and clans ate together, and in fact, for ages most eating was communal.

Food is closely interwoven with religion—the sacrifice of animals, the blessing of fields, the Eucharist, the traditional feasts—and it has been crucial to medicine, which, for centuries, was based on dietary principles. In its wake, food has sown cities, formed politics, and been at the root of prosperity or war.

The most important human relationships are all celebrated with or nourished by the sharing of food. Even death is marked by the serving of food and drink.

CREAMED CHIPPED BEEF

Lorenzo Semple, a close friend and neighbor, often stopped by in the morning to have tea. He’d abandoned his self-constructed diet that included rules for foods he said had no calories: anything eaten from someone else’s plate, anything eaten in the movies, anything brown. Recently, he’d been carrying a pack loaded with rocks to increase the number of calories he could burn on his walk to work. One day when he arrived at our house, there was a large bowl of rice pudding on the table, just out of the oven. It was intended for later in the day, but we knew he loved it.

Help yourself, we said.

No, no, please, I’m trying to lose weight, he insisted, and anyway, I’ve already had breakfast.

We poured him some tea.

Well, maybe just a bite, just one taste, to see if it’s any good, he said.

Twenty minutes later, he’d eaten the entire bowl. He stormed out of the house, furious at us for tempting him beyond his strength. The recipe, from Jennie Grossinger’s The Art of Jewish Cooking, was plainly worth putting into our own cookbook. Serves eight or Lorenzo, we noted.

The next day, to show he’d forgiven us, he returned and made us one of his favorite breakfasts: creamed chipped beef on toast. In the 1910 Manual for Army Cooks, this is recipe no. 251, and servicemen through the decades have called it—none too affectionately—SOS (shit on a shingle). But Lorenzo’s recipe might have turned them around:

CREAMED CHIPPED BEEF

1 4.5-ounce jar dried beef

2 tablespoons butter

Wondra flour, about 2 tablespoons, but it’s not necessary to measure it out

1 cup 2 percent or fat-free milk (more or less, depending on desired thickness)

Soak the dried beef in water to eliminate most of the salt, pat dry and tear into pieces. Melt the butter in a skillet over medium/medium-high heat, and add beef. Shake in Wondra flour and lightly sautée. Add milk gradually, stirring, and heat until mixture thickens. Add more milk to achieve desired consistency. Serve over toast. Serves two.

He could even join us, since dried beef has very little fat and is low in calories (and is brown).

TALLEYRAND

Talleyrand, who was bishop of Autun before he became a great statesman, was nearly as famous for his table as for his diplomacy. His knowledge of food was impressive, and he spent time in his kitchens daily deciding on the dinner for the evening and questioning the staff on what they may have overheard from guests the night before.

Breakfast and lunch for him were not consequential, and at night, as one source said, he liked heavy dishes and light women.

In the winter of 1803, during a time when there was virtually no fish to be had in Paris, Talleyrand gave a state dinner. At the appropriate time, to sounds of appreciation, a servant entered with an enormous salmon on a great silver platter. To the horror of all, he tripped while carrying it, and fish and platter fell to the floor.

Seeing this, Talleyrand said calmly, Have them bring in another salmon.

Almost immediately another appeared. The whole incident had been planned.

PINEAPPLE

On this day in 1813, the first pineapples were planted in Hawaii. They may have originally come from Brazil, though other sources say that Columbus encountered them first in Guadeloupe, their true home. As if in tribute, it was also on this day in 1935 that Amelia Earhart took off from Honolulu to make the first solo flight from Hawaii to California.

Fragrant and impressive to look at, most pineapples now come from Hawaii. Fifty years ago, the Royal Hawaiian Hotel had a fountain in the lobby that provided fresh pineapple juice.

Pineapples do not continue to ripen after picking. They will keep for some weeks but should not be refrigerated—temperatures below 45 degrees F are not beneficial. A distinctive aroma is one indication of a good pineapple, as well as being heavy for its size. The fruit is sweeter at the bottom, so if it is to be served plain, it should be cut lengthwise.

Pineapple sorbet is hard to rival. In France, you can occasionally find ananas givré, a pineapple hollowed out and filled with the sorbet made from its fruit. Sometimes this is frozen. At any time, it is nearly irresistible. Balzac, who was very fond of pineapple fritters, once planned to get rich by growing pineapples on his property near Paris, but couldn’t afford a greenhouse.

There are a number of recipes for making pineapple sorbet, most of them similar. One is:

PINEAPPLE SORBET

1 fresh pineapple

2 cups sugar

4 cups water

Rum to taste

Dissolve the sugar in the water. Cut the fruit of the pineapple into pieces and add to the sugar and water. Let stand for several hours, then purée in a blender and flavor with rum near the end. Freeze in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Serves four.

WOMEN AT TABLE

It was a mere five hundred years or so ago that women, who since antiquity had been largely segregated during meals, began to be widely included at the table. In the early days, advice was available on how they should conduct themselves and be a civilizing influence, as in the Ingenious Gentlewoman’s Delightful Companion, published by an unknown writer in 1653:

Talk not when you have meat in your mouth, and do not smack like a pig, nor venture to eat spoon-meat so hot that the tears stand in your eyes; which is as unseemly as the gentlewoman who pretended to have as little a stomach as she had a mouth, and therefore would not swallow her peas by spoonsful, but took them one by one, and cut them into two before she could eat them. It is very uncomely to drink so large a draught that your breath is almost gone, and are forced to blow strongly to recover yourself; throwing down your liquor as into a funnel, is an action fitter for a juggler than a gentlewoman …. It will appear very comely and decent to use a fork; so touch no meat without it.

FORKS

Compared to spoons and knives, used since prehistoric times, forks were latecomers. By the year 100 A.D., they appeared on the tables of royalty in the Middle East, and one hundred years or so later, a Byzantine princess brought a case of them to Venice as part of her trousseau when she married the heir to the doge. Italians of the day were outraged that she should prefer a metallic instrument to the ten fingers God had given her, and when she died soon after her arrival, it was considered divine retribution.

Forks were gradually adopted by the upper classes across Europe over the next five hundred years and were mainly for sticky sweets or food that would stain the fingers. The English considered them effeminate, and it was a long time before they crossed the Channel. An Englishman, Thomas Coryat, claimed to be the first to use one, and he had to go to Europe to do it. In his book Coryat’s Crudities, published in 1611, he writes that the Italian cannot by any means endure to have his dish touched with fingers, seeing all men’s fingers are not alike cleane. A fork in the left hand held the food to the plate while the right hand cut it with a knife, and then the fork delivered the food directly to the mouth.

Twenty years later, the fork had immigrated to America, but just barely. Governor Winthrop, of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was said to have had the only one on the continent. Ordinary folk were still spearing food with their sharp-tipped knives to carry it to their mouths. When pointed-tipped knives gave way to blunt-ended at the table, people had to use their spoons to steady food while cutting it. They then switched the spoon to the right hand to scoop up the pieces of food. Once the use of forks became widespread, Americans used them in the right hand to bring food to the mouth.

CORDON BLEU

The term cordon bleu originally referred to the wide blue ribbon from which hung a cross designating the most prestigious Order of the Holy Spirit, the L’Ordre des Chevaliers du Saint Esprit, created by Henry III in 1578. The investiture banquets were as famous as the medal.

A century later, Mme de Maintenon broadened the meaning of the cordon bleu. She had been the governess of Louis XIV’s illegitimate children and later became his second wife, married in secret because of her low social standing. Always interested in education, she spent much time at Saint-Cyr, the school founded to educate the daughters of impoverished nobility and orphans of French soldiers. There, she established the Cordon Bleu of Cookery, and the blue ribbon of honor eventually came to mean excellence in any field, but especially in the kitchen.

On this day in 1896, Le Cordon Bleu held its first classes in the culinary arts at the Palais Royale in Paris. It has become the most famous culinary institute in the world. Taught by some of the great chefs of the day, the school has produced its own luminaries. One was Julia Child, who qualified for professional training after World War II, when Le Cordon Bleu was accepted as an accredited school under the G.I. Bill.

GIVING A DINNER PARTY (I)

You decide to give a dinner party. Someone is coming to town, or it seems a good idea to introduce someone to someone else, or you’re just in the mood to have an evening with friends. You may choose the next night or one a few days or weeks off.

As W.S. Gilbert said, When planning a dinner party, what’s more important than what’s on the table is what’s on the chairs. The first thing is to invite the main guests. The others are chosen as complements—a mix, if possible, of couples and singles, men and women, though we don’t try for a perfect balance. No more than seven, usually, including ourselves, since that’s the most our table will comfortably seat. In general, two at a table makes for the most intimate talk, though that’s not really a dinner party. Nor is three, though then the conversation is likely to be the most revealing. Four is congenial, and five the most interesting with its slight imbalance. Six is pleasant, but tends toward the conventional if it is three couples, especially if they’re already acquainted.

There can be larger parties, of course, with two tables or else a buffet with people eating from plates in their laps or on low coffee tables. But then it is impossible for everyone to join in one conversation, and—if the guests are interesting—people end up feeling that wherever they sat, they’ve missed something.

If you’ve invited people far in advance, you might call the day of the dinner to remind them of the time.

GIVING A DINNER PARTY (II)

MENU

To approach this on a fundamental level, a dinner is more of an occasion if you have two courses before dessert. The first course might obviously be a soup (hot or cold), salad, smoked salmon with toast, bruschetta, a sautéed vegetable (leeks, sweet red peppers) with a dressing, or for a major feed, a risotto or pasta.

The main course needs something at its side—a potato or rice dish if it is meat, fish, or chicken, and possibly another vegetable. When pasta is the main course, you might serve it solo and add something afterward—a green salad or a cheese platter if the pasta hasn’t included a lot of cheese.

Unless the meal is particularly heavy, chocolate or something rich can come as dessert, although a fruit tart or fruit in a liqueur is often our choice.

PREPARATIONS

Besides basic spirits—gin, vodka, beer, Scotch, bourbon—check the bar to make sure you have soda or seltzer, tonic, and olives/cocktail onions/lemon peel. Make or buy plenty of ice. Decide on the wine and chill the white before the evening begins. If you’re going to serve drinks after dinner, have those and the glasses at hand.

Sometimes for a special occasion, you can write a single copy of the menu by hand and display it on the table.

After shopping for the ingredients, prepare anything possible ahead of time: dessert, salad and its dressing, assembling the main course if it will be baked, and the accompanying dishes up to the point of cooking.

When an important guest was expected in ancient Egypt, the entire household went into a frenzy of cleaning, brewing, and baking weeks in advance. That was then. Don’t exhaust yourself by cleaning the house to inspection readiness. Tidy the bathroom guests will use, clear clutter, and let it go at that. Devote yourself instead to the elements that will actually be memorable: the food and the conversation.

GIVING A DINNER PARTY (III)

The Air Force taught Jim the value of knowing exactly what should happen and when—something crucial to a dinner party. He draws up a flow chart, working backward from the time we expect to sit down at the table. Especially important are the times certain dishes go into the oven or come off the stove. If the baked potatoes aren’t ready when the meat is rare, you’re going to be eating undercooked potatoes or overdone meat. Gavril Lourie, the son of friends, apprenticed at two-star restaurants in France, and he goes as far as making a diagram of each dish and how it will be arranged on the plates, then tacks it on the wall as he cooks.

We also have a basic master list: set table, set up bar, hors d’oeu-vres out, open wine, light fire in fireplace, prepare cups and plates for later coffee and dessert. And just before sitting down, fill water glasses, cut bread, light candles.

As a child, you learn that promptness is a virtue, and we do have a few friends who arrive for dinner at exactly the designated hour. We know who they are, so on those evenings, we’re ready. But usually, people show up about fifteen or twenty minutes later. As hosts, we can always use the extra time. If everything is actually done, we can sit down for a few minutes and congratulate ourselves.

We allow forty-five minutes to an hour for drinks, hors d’oeuvres, conversation, and unwinding, and to allow for guests who are late. Usually we serve something quite light with drinks—olives, nuts, sometimes a tapenade with crackers—depending on how rich the meal will be.

The end of the dinner is as important as any other part. It is like the finish of a wine, the aftertaste. We often bring a plate of chocolates or another sweet—butter-crunch candy or chocolate-coated candied oranges—to the table. Then, perhaps, liqueurs and small glasses or even cognac, occasionally in another room. The energy of the evening has died by this point, but one doesn’t want a collapse. It is good to sign off with a flourish, sometimes even a game of poker.

GIVING A DINNER PARTY (IV)

It’s more fun to cook with someone, even given differing opinions on exactly how it should be done. There are many men who are great in the kitchen and have a good time being there. It’s worth remembering that the one who shops, chops, and is otherwise in a supporting role gets no credit and may be less inclined to be part of the team next time. Each cook likes to have a glory dish—the salad with the wonderful dressing, the memorable tart—that reliably gets compliments.

Serving should be decided on ahead of time. One system is to have the first course on the table when the guests sit down. Then you can present the main course and accompanying dishes around the table. They can be passed by the guests, or they can be served already on the plates. Flexibility is crucial: just because you’ve made a plan doesn’t mean it can’t be changed. If whoever is in charge of dessert is deep into a discussion of death and how to think about it, the other can take over those duties.

If you ask who wants coffee, there’s usually an awkward moment when the guests wonder if they’re putting you out by saying yes. A better way is to go ahead and make it, bring it to the table, and then ask.

GIVING A DINNER PARTY (V)

The clean-up, as well as the cooking, is more interesting if you’re not doing it alone. Anyone can load a dishwasher and put the leftovers away, but it takes someone involved to be part of the post-party analysis, the late-night debriefing during which you hash over the food, the guests, and the most outrageous or revealing things that were said. It’s inevitable that now and then one of you was in the kitchen, so it’s also a chance to hear what you may have missed.

GIVING A DINNER PARTY (VI)

Keep in mind: attitude is everything. As Horace says, a host is like a general; adversity reveals his genius.

FOOD

Sometimes a guest has special dietary rules: they’re allergic to shellfish, cannot digest tomato seeds, or they’re vegetarians. If you know ahead of time, it should influence, though not completely dictate, the menu, unless they’re the guest of honor. But you’re not running a restaurant, and the cocktail hour is no time to try to prepare something special.

EXTRAS

This happens so often it hardly qualifies as unexpected. A guest calls with the news that a friend or relative has appeared and asks if they can be included. Yes, if at all possible, and especially if it’s only one. One of our best extras appeared on a night that John Irving called to say he thought he was in love, but he hadn’t introduced her