Life Is Meals_ A Food Lover's Book of Days - James Salter [14]
ONION SOUP
Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, after a night of drinking in Paris in the 1960s, ended up at Les Halles at 4 a.m. for onion soup. Pinter fell asleep at the table, exhausted and suffering from stomach cramps. He woke to find Beckett had scoured the town and come back with bicarbonate of soda. “It was then I knew,” Pinter wrote, “that this was a man who understood everything about the human condition.”
CAVIAR
Even in the 1890s, when caviar from American and French sturgeon sold for next to nothing, Russian caviar was on a different level, both in price and in quality. Today, sturgeon have been nearly obliterated by pollution, except in the region of the Caspian Sea. Caviar is rare, there have been importation bans, and prices have soared. The czars and later Stalin got around the price by simply appropriating tons of the stuff.
Dostoyevsky’s wife, Anna Grigorievna, in a less-powerful position, was nevertheless able to buy this delicacy, known as an aphrodisiac. After her husband finished writing each chapter of Crime and Punishment, she was said to have rewarded him with caviar and sex.
The different types of caviar are named for the species of sturgeon that produce them: beluga, oestrova, and sevruga. The tiny eggs are salted to preserve them, but the less salt used, the better the taste. Top-of-the-line caviar is called malassol, Russian for “lightly salted.” The heavily salted variety from the Hudson Rver used to be so plentiful that it was served free at bars in New York to induce thirst.
ROOM SERVICE
Waiters are one thing, a face-to-face matter; room service is another. You are on the phone talking to someone unseen and located who-knows-exactly-where.
Irving Lazar, better known as Swifty, diminutive and aggressive, a famous literary and movie agent for more than four decades, from the 1940s on, once was staying at a hotel in the American West and in the morning called down to order breakfast.
“Yes, sir, what would you like?”
He wanted toast, he said. He’d like it burned on one side, in fact, but untoasted on the other. He would also like a soft-boiled egg, but not completely cooked, a little mucous-y on top. And coffee—not hot, however, just tepid. How long would that take?
“I’m sorry, sir,” was the answer, “but we’re not equipped to do that.”
“You were yesterday,” Lazar replied drily.
CAESAR SALAD
There are few people who aren’t enthusiastic about a good Caesar salad, especially when made as it was by Caesar Cardini, an Italian immigrant and chef who created it at his restaurant in Tijuana in 1924. The story is that when customers appeared late one night, he gathered the few remaining ingredients in the kitchen and instructed a waiter to combine and toss them at the table, as if the salad were a house specialty.
Countless variations have developed since then, and most claim to be the original recipe, which, in fact, included only romaine, garlic, olive oil, croutons, Parmesan cheese, and Worcestershire sauce, but no anchovy or egg. We had eliminated those two ourselves when many guests objected to anchovies, and also raw eggs, as they could be carriers of salmonella.
The croutons are better if homemade, and the cheese, if grated by hand from a block of real Italian Parmesan. The tougher, dark green outer leaves of the romaine should be thrown away and only the crisp, paler interior leaves used, torn into bite-sized pieces.
Our own version of the classic dressing is:
CAESAR SALAD
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 clove crushed garlic
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
5 tablespoons good olive oil
Romaine lettuce
Parmesan cheese
Large pinch of salt
In a jar with a lid, combine the first four ingredients and shake until mixed. Taste and adjust as necessary. Pour over the romaine, then add the grated Parmesan and the croutons that have been made earlier by cutting into crustless cubes of about ½ inch any genuine white bread, such as sourdough or country, tossing them in olive oil and a little crushed garlic, and browning