Life Is Meals_ A Food Lover's Book of Days - James Salter [15]
RUSKIN
On this day in 1819, in a house on Brunswick Square in London, John Ruskin was born to wealthy parents. It was the same year that Queen Victoria was born, and they would rule the century together, Ruskin in the realm of the aesthetic. He was England’s preeminent art critic—dictator, in fact, of artistic opinion. His Modern Painters alone comprised five volumes and took seventeen years to write. He was also a major social theorist, proposing such radical ideas as old-age pensions and a nationalized system of education.
Although he knew the Bible intimately and painting and architecture as well, he was perhaps less confident, or at least conflicted, with regard to women. It is said that the sight of a woman’s naked body made him uneasy or even physically ill. He married just once. It lasted six years and was apparently unconsummated.
He advised young women to combine “English thoroughness, and French art, and Arabian hospitality” in their homes. There were three feminine virtues, he declared. The first was to be intensely happy. The second was to dress beautifully and to extend this beauty to the home. The third virtue, he said, was to cook.
FORESTIERE
It was probably medallions of veal forestiere—small, oval-shaped pieces of veal with mushrooms and blanched bacon bits together with a gravy—eaten for the first time in Chamonix or Megève—that acquainted me with what was a very honest-sounding word. “Forestiere” seemed to stand for something prepared by a woodsman or a family that lived simply and virtuously. My eye never goes much further when I see it on a menu. With potatoes, carrots, or even a soft-boiled egg and mushrooms cooked in butter along with the bacon. Worth a detour.
J.S.
HOSTESS GIFT
The easy thing is to take a bottle of wine as a gift when you go to dinner. However, it is not so easy for the hosts. If the wine is not right for the meal, there’s the awkwardness of deciding whether to go ahead and open it anyway since, if it is a good bottle, the guest may expect to drink some of it. The other possibility is to put it away. You can write the guest’s name on it as a reminder to bring it out next time he or she comes.
In Europe, guests assume that the hostess has already carefully chosen the wine to go with her menu, and it would be almost an insult to bring wine. The same goes for anything that might be intended as part of the meal, including candy. Flowers are frequently the choice, though requiring the hostess to interrupt what she’s doing to put them in water, arranged and displayed.
Higher on the social ladder, guests are less likely to bring a gift, under the assumption, presumably, that the hosts already have everything.
BOUQUET
There are some beautiful words that belong to wine, probably because of the place it has long held in human affections. “Robe” is a word for the color of a wine. “Bouquet” is a less precise word for the smell. There are actually two words for this, “aroma” and “bouquet.” Aroma is used for the uncomplicated smell of grape and fermentation, usually in young wine, while bouquet is something more complex, the property of a wine that has matured in the bottle—the perfume, so to speak. It’s a good indication of quality, of the wine’s character and depth. Young wines and white wines normally do not possess it.
To appreciate the bouquet of a good red, it should be served at 60-65 degrees F, which is also best for taste. This is well below the temperature in a typical American room. At low temperatures there will be little smell, and higher than 65 degrees F, the smell of alcohol begins to be included. So, when it is recommended to be served at room temperature, that means somewhat cooler than most rooms. Thirty minutes or so in the refrigerator will bring a red wine that has been in a normal room down to 60 degrees F.
The correct temperature for white wine is only slightly lower—not really chilled but 55