Life Is Meals_ A Food Lover's Book of Days - James Salter [108]
INUIT/ESKIMO
In the Arctic climate, foods high in fat and protein are essential, and meat—whether seal, caribou, fish, polar bear, or walrus—is shared by everyone in the community after the hunt. Despite the influx of processed food, there is still a strong tradition centered around communal meals. The Inuit belief is that food makes friends out of strangers and even doubles in volume when it is shared.
The Inuit of the Canadian northwest have a yearly festival on this day that epitomizes their philosophy. On the day before, the children go from door to door collecting food for the feast. The next day, as they share their meal, the men and women ask for each other’s valued possessions, which are freely given, since it’s considered bad manners to refuse. Then, when many items have been placed in the hands of their new owners, they all dance together.
CABBAGE
Cabbage is not mentioned in the Bible, though it was eaten by both Romans and Greeks. The Emperor Tiberius once required the Senate to vote on whether there was any dish in the world superior to corned beef and cabbage.
Diogenes, to a young courtier: If you lived on cabbage, you would not be obliged to flatter the powerful.
Young courtier: If you flattered the powerful, you would not be obliged to live on cabbage.
In Russia, cabbage soup, or shchi, is made from cabbage, carrots, meat, onions, celery, and garlic, with a sour flavoring from apples, sour cream, or sauerkraut juice. A favorite for at least a thousand years, it can be found in Russian poems and prose, on the table of both rich and poor, and in the fond memory of every exile.
JASON EPSTEIN ON COOKING
Like all great cooks, Jason Epstein decides what to cook by seeing what’s available and what looks good in the market. In New York City, he lives near Chinatown where vegetables, fruit, fish, and meat are sold by small vendors and are excellent. The mark of a good restaurant is that it remains true to the ingredients and that the ingredients are fresh. This is also his method.
The important thing in preparing a dinner is timing, he says—making sure things are done at the right time. He doesn’t write a schedule or make a diagram, but works it out in his head. Another thing worth knowing is how to brown things—fish or chicken, for example—without having them stick to the pan. “You can’t brown things in Teflon,” he says. The secret is to have the pan very hot before adding the oil and then to wait until it shimmers before adding the food.
Of the countless restaurants in France he has visited, he mentions with particular affection the Relais de la Poste in a small town called Magesq about fifty kilometers from Biarritz. Afterward, we looked it up in the Michelin: 1,218 inhabitants, and the Relais de la Poste, with thirteen rooms, is in red, meaning “especially agreeable.” Its restaurant boasts two stars. The specialties include breast of pigeon with wild mushrooms and game in season.
Jason has been there a number of times, the first when traveling with Gore Vidal, “when we were still speaking,” he says. “The place never changes. The waiters are always the same. The daughter who brings fresh orange juice to your room in the morning is still twelve years old.”
FONDUE
A poet’s hope: to be
Like some valley cheese,
Local, but prized everywhere.
—W. H. AUDEN
Gruyères (the town is spelled with an s, but its notable cheese without one) is about seventy miles northeast of Geneva as you head into the heart of Switzerland. It produces one of the two cheeses—the other being Emmenthaler–that are the basis for fondue, which comes from the French verb fondre, “to melt.” You can tell an authentic Gruyère cheese by the word “Switzerland” or a crossbow stamped on the rind. Fondue likely originated