Life Is Meals_ A Food Lover's Book of Days - James Salter [32]
• A chef’s knife, eight to ten inches long with a wide, tapering blade for slicing and chopping.
• A carving knife, thinner, for slicing and carving meat, turkey etc.
• A paring knife, which is a small version of a chef’s knife, for peeling, coring, mincing.
Also useful are:
• A bread knife with a serrated blade.
• A knife that Kay once impulsively bought at a demonstration in a supermarket, where a man was alternately slicing tomatoes and cutting nails in two with the same blade. Indestructible, he said. It turned out he was right. The knife was one of a set of three for nine dollars, the other two being unexceptional. The “best quality” rule was disregarded in this case, luckily. The long, flexible blade has very small serrations and a forked, pointed tip. It is stainless steel and is stamped “Taiwan.” It will do anything, though whether you can ever find the man again is doubtful.
Knives should be kept in a wooden block holder or on a magnetic wall rack rather than loose in a drawer. They should not be put in the dishwasher.
CHICKPEA
On this day in 1282, remembered as the Sicilian Vespers, being able to pronounce the name of a vegetable meant the difference between life and death. The Sicilians, in rebellion against France, murdered anyone who couldn’t say chickpea—cece—in Italian.
BRILLAT-SAVARIN · PLATO
CASANOVA · FOX’S HOUSEGUEST RULES
POLPETTONE ALLA TOSCANA · ROALD DAHL
COMMANDARIA · KELLOGG · BUDDHISM · RABELAIS
MANNERS · AGNÈS SOREL · HOT DOGS
YR. OBEDIENT SERVANT · TITANIC
WAVERLY ROOT · DOUGHNUT · BRIE
BRIE—POEM · SPAGHETTI AND MEATBALLS
JOHN IRVING · PEKING DUCK · LEMONS
CHAUCER · VATEL · WINE PRICE · TEA
EGYPTIAN DINNER PARTY · ALICE WATERS
JFK AND JEFFERSON · ETIQUETTE
SACHERTORTE AND BRIE
BRILLAT-SAVARIN
1775. Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, who was to write what is perhaps the most famous book on food, The Physiology of Taste, was born in Belley France. The son of a lawyer, he became a lawyer himself and eventually the popular mayor of the town. He was a cousin through marriage of the French beauty and social figure Mme Récamier, as well as a friend of Talleyrand and often a guest at his table.
He might have disappeared into a quiet provincial life, but in the wake of the Revolution, he was forced to flee the country. He ended up in America, where for three years he supported himself by giving French lessons and playing the violin in an orchestra. Music was one of his great interests, as were women, though he never married. But above all were his interests in dining and the glory of good food. Invited once to dinner with the choice of either scientists or men of letters as companions, he replied grandly, “My choice is made. Let us dine twice.”
In 1797, he returned to France and, though he had lost almost everything, including a vineyard, he was reinstated. He became a judge, served for a time with the army, and spent the last twenty-five years of his life peacefully practicing law in Paris. Physiologie du Gout, written on the side, so to speak, over more than three decades, was published anonymously and at his own expense in the fall of 1825, a few months, as it turned out, before his death. Containing description, opinion, anecdote, history, philosophy, fact, fancy, poetry, and occasional recipes, it is remarkable both for breadth of knowledge and style, a great-hearted tribute to the civilized pleasures of the table, as well as some related pleasures. It was an immediate success, admired by Balzac, among others, who paid it the compliment of writing his own Physiology of Marriage. “Animals feed,” is one of the many aphorisms in Brillat-Savarin’s book, “man eats; only a man of wit knows how to dine.”
In the icy January of 1826, already ill with the flu, he loyally attended a mass for the soul of the former king, Louis XVI, beheaded many years earlier. The prayers were long, and three distinguished men were to die as a consequence of having endured the cold, including Brillat-Savarin, who developed pneumonia a few days after.