Life Is Meals_ A Food Lover's Book of Days - James Salter [13]
As a teenager, our son started one of his own. At eighteen, it included his aunt’s pot roast, Caesar salad, homemade pasta sauce, an artist friend’s apple crisp, and for the future, the dry martini.
NELL GWYN
1650. Nell Gwyn, the daughter of a bawdy-house keeper, was born this day in London. She grew up, according to diarist Samuel Pepys, filling the glasses of the patrons and at an early age became an actress under the affectionate wing, so to speak, of a leading actor, Charles Hart. She rose to become the mistress of a lord and then at nineteen, of the king himself, Charles II. Witty, generous, shapely, and illiterate, she was the only one of the king’s mistresses adored by the public, and remained in the royal bed for sixteen years until his death in 1685. She bore him two sons, both of whom became lords, and entertained the king and his friends while living extravagantly. She died at the age of thirty-seven, two years after the king.
Nell Gwyn had begun as an “orange girl,” one of those who sold that fruit in theaters and, as Waverly Root observes, at a somewhat higher price, themselves. The oranges were less for eating than for holding to one’s face to mask the stench of the audience.
It seems fitting that the orange, along with the apple and grape, is one of the world’s most venerable fruits. Probably originating in China, it has the distinction of not being mentioned in the Bible, and its color is not an indication of ripeness, but rather of the temperature to which is has been exposed during growth. The familiar, rich color is frequently the result of dyes or degreening.
OLIVES
Legend has it that in ancient Greece, two Olympian gods competed for the honor of having a newly founded city overlooking the Aegean Sea named for them. They decided on a competition in which each would give a gift to the people, who would then decide which gift was more valuable. Poseidon gave the horse. Athena struck the earth with her lance, and an olive tree appeared. The people named the city Athens.
Olives were a dietary staple of the ancient world and are still central to the cuisines of the Mediterranean region. A true Athenian, Plato called olives his favorite food. There are dozens of varieties of different sizes and shapes, but with only a few exceptions, green olives are unripe olives, harvested early and bitter. Most, including those from Italy and the prized Kalamata from Greece, are allowed to ripen on the tree, where they turn black, deep purple, or brown and become softer and more oily.
The majority of olives are crushed for oil, which in ancient times was used not only for cooking and to flavor other foods but as fuel for lamps, as a lubricant for moving objects as heavy as building stones, and even as a perfume. It was also a medicine and thought to give health and longevity when rubbed into the skin.
Both the fruit and oil provide “good” fats—the monounsaturated kind—having no cholesterol. Those not used for oil are often cured in brine, oil, water, or even lye—the method favored in Spain—or a combination of these, and then are preserved in oil, brine, or vinegar, sometimes pitted and stuffed, or flavored with herbs. They can also be cured in salt, which dries and shrivels them, intensifying their flavor.
TIMING
Timing, they say, is everything, and nowhere more so than in cooking. As English writer Launcelot Sturgeon wrote, “The critical minute is less difficult to be hit in the boudoir than in the kitchen.”
Every culture has its expression for something cooked exactly the right length of time and no more. In Italy pasta is done when al dente, not cooked through but with some remaining resistance when bitten. Chinese use ts’ui to indicate either an ingredient at its peak or something perfectly cooked. In France, it is à point, “at the right moment,” meaning “perfectly ripe” when referring to fruit and “done to a turn” in regard to meat, which is approximately