Around the World in 80 Dinners - Bill Jamison [140]
Little irritations stayed that way instead of growing into real problems. Our cell phone/PDA, Mobi, couldn’t find a network in a few remote spots, but it, the camera, and tape recorder functioned well on the whole and they made it back intact. When we spilled food and drinks on ourselves, predictable enough to wager on, our Tide to Go stain remover sticks and laundry detergent did their jobs admirably. Our clothes, however clean, became obnoxiously familiar by the end, like guests who overstay a welcome, but we simply dumped all the offending garments on our last stop in Brazil. Cheryl in particular gleefully left behind a hefty pile of discards, though she surprised herself in the end by keeping the tatty old cashmere cardigan she wore on planes and a Chico’s T-shirt that survived the strains of travel remarkably well.
Arriving home two weeks before Christmas, a frosty time in the New Mexico mountains, we’re looking forward to holiday visits with family and friends, but our first priority is a green-chile cheeseburger, grilled outside despite the cold. Other home-prepared comfort foods follow quickly, including beefy Texas chili, richly creamy mac and cheese, bagels and smoked salmon with cream cheese for Cheryl, and for Bill, a peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwich on a fresh flour tortilla.
After settling in for a spell, we start cooking favorite dishes from the trip to relive our memories. Those that work best in an American home kitchen are presented here in recipe form. Unsurprisingly, many of the dishes we tried didn’t travel as well, often because of variations in the ingredients available. The success of some preparations, particularly ones featuring seafood, depends on a level of freshness seldom found in the United States. Even a good whole fish purchased “fresh daily,” about the best you can get anywhere in this country, differs in taste and other characteristics from a fish still alive in the cook’s hands.
Freshness obviously matters as well with produce, but that’s less of an issue these days for a careful American consumer because of the increasing number of farmers’ markets, roadside farm stands, and groceries and restaurants committed to buying from local suppliers. Diversity of varieties can be a bigger problem. Asian cooks don’t just put fresh eggplant in a dish, they pick a specific variety of eggplant to impart a desired and distinctive flavor and texture. A mother-and-daughter team of New Mexico farmers, Eremita and Margaret Campos, once grew many of the dozens of eggplant varieties common in Asia—even the pea-shaped type that adds zesty bitterness to some Thai specialties—but they couldn’t sell them. Our cooks and their guests, both in homes and restaurants, aren’t ready for such complexity.
Before leaving on the trip, we thought the United States in recent decades was catching up to international culinary capitals in its understanding and appreciation of food. Our experiences abroad undermined some of that parochial confidence. In Australia and South Africa we saw contemporary chefs taking a bold leadership role in transforming the tastes of their nations. They presented exciting, unconventional dishes, exploring the frontiers of fresh local ingredients and elevating the expectations of patrons instead of pandering to them.
American chefs are just as creative and skilled, but the bottom-line consciousness of their restaurants and the resistance of their customers to daring flavors exerts a powerful restraint on their ability to lead in a similar way. Some buck the odds and take risks to appeal to serious eaters, but many of our top talents are content to cook for people who have too little real enthusiasm for eating to bother with