Life Is Meals_ A Food Lover's Book of Days - James Salter [18]
Agricultural land is limited in Japan, but rice continues to be grown wherever it is possible to establish a paddy, despite the enormous amount of hand labor involved in transplanting the seedlings. The yield is great, however, and rice is used not only as a source of food but also drink. There are over six thousand brands of sake today, all brewed from rice but differing slightly in odor, taste, and alcoholic content; most are about fifteen to twenty percent, comparable to wines made from grapes. Whether sake is served hot or cold, the rule is never to refill your own glass, but if dining with Japanese, you won’t have to wait long for someone else at the table to do it.
MOLIÈRE
In 1673, Molière, fatigued and ill on this day but performing nevertheless in Le malade imaginaire, the last play he ever wrote, began coughing fiercely. He was taken home after the final curtain, and it is said that in bed he refused broth and asked instead for Parmesan cheese, the last thing he would taste on earth. He died not long after from a hemorrhage caused by the violence of his cough.
DESSERT
The word “dessert” comes from the French desservir, meaning “to clear the table” or take away what has been served. It has come to mean what is offered after a meal. In ancient times, this was fruit or cheese, still a very good choice, Platonic in its simplicity and difficult to pass up.
In restaurants, the display of a variety of desserts on a cart is said to have originated in Italy to tempt young women to remain at the table during family gatherings.
SENSE OF TASTE
Human beings have an average of ten thousand taste buds, mainly on the tongue but also on the palate and even as far back in the throat as the larynx. Cows have more than twice as many, which seems a bit of a waste.
Our taste buds are a kind of modified skin cell, and in their general arrangement register sweet (on the tip of the tongue), sour (along the sides of the tongue), salty (on the surface of the tongue), and bitter (at the back of the tongue). Some individuals have a more acute sense of taste than others, but all humans seem to be born with an inherent liking for sweetness, evident even in infants, while appreciation of spicy or sour flavors is learned. Taste buds are replaced every ten days or so and less frequently with age, accounting for a diminishing sense of taste as people grow older. The complex wiring of the brain incorporates smells into our sense of taste, which is why the taste of food becomes flat or even nonexistent when you have a head cold.
PEPPER
Black pepper, white pepper, and green peppercorns are all berries of the same plant, a vine that twines itself around trees growing in equatorial heat. Red pepper, also called cayenne, isn’t pepper at all but a chili, misidentified by Columbus when he thought he’d reached India instead of the Caribbean.
In ancient Greece and Rome, pepper arriving by caravan from India was considered so valuable that it was preferred to money, which fluctuated wildly in value. Rents were paid in peppercorns, as well as taxes, dowries, and even bribes. Still the most widely used spice in the world, pepper was valued first as a medicine to help gastric problems and gradually evolved into a seasoning to enhance other foods. Venice grew rich importing it during the Crusades, and later Portugal, the Dutch East India Company, and the British East India Company did the same, spreading their culture while dominating the pepper trade.
If left to ripen naturally, pepper berries turn red. Green peppercorns result from harvesting before they begin to redden. For black pepper, the berries are allowed to ripen a bit more, then are picked and dried in the sun until they turn black.
Berries to be used for white pepper ripen even longer on the vines before being harvested. They are then soaked