Life Is Meals_ A Food Lover's Book of Days - James Salter [40]
A restaurant generally charges double or triple the wholesale price, selling this same bottle to the customer for somewhere between thirty-five and fifty dollars, plus tax and tip. The sale of wine is more profitable than the cost of buying and preparing food, and most restaurants rely on wine and liquor sales to help keep themselves in business.
TEA
Except for water, more people in the world drink tea than any other beverage. The green tea of Japan is central to the Zen Buddhist tea ceremony but is also used to flavor the tea ice cream sold by street vendors. The nomadic desert tradition of the Middle East regards the serving of highly sweetened black tea to strangers as both symbolic and practical hospitality. China is the greatest producer of tea, which requires hand picking and, therefore, cheap labor.
All tea comes from the same bush, no matter where it is grown. Whether it is black, green, or the intermediate oolong depends on how it is prepared. Green tea is dried immediately after it is picked, black is fermented by wilting and rolling the leaves to encourage oxidation before it is dried, and oolong is fermented only partially before drying. Green has the lowest levels of caffeine, only about twenty-five milligrams per cup, while black has twice that, though only about half as much as brewed coffee.
Green tea is now believed to have health-giving properties and seems to help fight arthritis and some cancers, including those of the mouth, pancreas, breast, and lung. Some scientists think further study will show that all teas have such properties.
Besides these benefits, you can reduce puffiness around the eyes by placing moistened tea bags over them for several minutes.
• Most Indian teas are black. Assam and Darjeeling are among the best known.
• China produces both black and green teas—Keemun is a favored black.
• Ceylon teas are excellent. Formosa produces the best oolong.
• Pekoe or orange pekoe is only a quality designation for black tea.
• Earl Grey is black tea, oddly enough, scented with the oil of an inedible but fragrant citrus fruit, the bergamot orange, grown almost exclusively in Calabria, in the south of Italy.
EGYPTIAN DINNER PARTY
The dining hall was the most important room in wealthy Egyptian households of 2,500 years ago, and the preparations for a dinner party were intended to honor both the host and the guest.
The staff included the superintendent of the storehouse, who also oversaw the slaughterhouse and the bakery where grain was ground into flour by hand and then kneaded, occasionally with the feet if great quantities of dough were required. In charge of cooking was the head of the kitchen, who also supervised the “bearers of cool drinks” and the “preparers of sweets.”
The dining tables were covered with embroidered cloths and decorated with lotus flowers, and the guests also wore flowers in their hair. Boys and girls passed perfumes and wine to the sounds of harps, flutes, and less soothingly, castanets and kettledrums, while the harem women—a part of every large home—entertained with dancing and singing.
ALICE WATERS
Alice Waters, born on this day in 1944, grew up in New Jersey, where she “never tasted a perfectly ripe tomato.” On a trip to France in her early twenties, she experienced for the first time food straight from the garden or farm, simply prepared and eaten at rustic country tables. It changed her life.
She adopted that cooking style as her own, and the friends who gathered at her house in Berkeley often urged her to open a restaurant. The result was Chez Panisse, which opened its doors in 1971. She imagined it as a place where straightforward food prepared with fresh ingredients would be served in an atmosphere of true hospitality. This was a simple idea, but all simplifications are astounding.
Over the years, her enthusiasm, energy, and insistence on perfection changed the face of American dining, first at her own restaurant