Life Is Meals_ A Food Lover's Book of Days - James Salter [66]
TOUR D’ARGENT
The oldest restaurant in Paris, the Tour d’Argent, can be traced back to the 16th century, when it existed as an inn where the king, Henry IV, known as the Evergreen Lover, came to dine on heron pâté. Later, Cardinal Richelieu and Mme de Pompadour ate there.
The real origin of the Tour d’Argent as a restaurant, however, was in 1780. Crowned heads of Europe and celebrated people of all sorts have since frequented it. The view from the great windows high above the Seine is staggering. The most renowned cathedral in France, Notre Dame, lies beneath you. The bill can be staggering, as well.
Like a famed vineyard, the restaurant has long been in the same hands. Its specialty, pressed duck, has been served for more than a century. Another specialty is quenelles de brochet, a delicious kind of log-shaped dumpling made of minced pike, flour, butter, and eggs. The wines include every great label of France.
GAZPACHO
Gazpacho was once a food of the poor, who took it with them to eat when they worked in the fields of Andalusia in southern Spain. At first it was simply water, bread, and olive oil mashed together to form a paste. Later vegetables were added to make a soup, which is now always served cold, as if to counter the soaring temperatures of Spanish summers.
There are as many varieties as there are regions of Spain, but the classic gazpacho comes from the area around Seville and Córdoba. As early as the Middle Ages, cucumber and garlic were diced and added, with some vinegar, to the bread, water, and oil mixture, along with tomatoes. After Columbus brought green pepper to Spain from the New World, it was added to the mix. The soup didn’t migrate into the rest of Europe and the United States until the 19th century.
Recipes from parts of Spain may now include mayonnaise, almonds, grapes, anchovies, green beans, and egg whites. The ingredients of some gazpachos are puréed. In others, they remain distinct, floating in the broth. Sometimes it’s a combination of both, as in the recipe of a Spanish friend, Corina Arranz, who has perfected her version over twenty years. Her sister serves it every summer at her restaurant in the village of Vallelado, near Segovia.
GAZPACHO
4 pounds ripe tomatoes
1 small cucumber
1 small green pepper
⅓ medium onion
½ clove garlic
1 cup virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 4 × 4-inch piece of day-old French bread or baguette
Salt to taste
For the garnish:
1 small cucumber, peeled, seeded, and finely diced
2 small tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and finely diced
1 green pepper, finely diced
1 small onion, finely diced
Dice-sized pieces of fresh bread, lightly toasted in oven
Peel and slice the tomatoes and cucumber. Cut the tomatoes, cucumber, green pepper, onion, and garlic into pieces and put them in a blender, along with the olive oil, vinegar, and salt. Blend them to smoothness, and taste to see if extra oil, vinegar, or salt is needed.
Place the bread in a shallow bowl of cold water. When it has softened, squeeze the water from the bread by hand, and add the bread to the blender and mix to smoothness.
Refrigerate the soup for at least two hours before serving. To serve, you can add some cubes of ice to the mixture to chill it further, but don’t serve the ice. Place the diced toppings on the table in separate small bowls. People can add a tablespoon of each to the puréed soup if desired. Serves six to eight.
ADDERS
Born without arms or legs, moving only by the graceful action of a supple body snakes generally have been feared and detested by humans. They have also, poisonous and otherwise, been eaten by humans everywhere that they exist. It is said by some that the venomous species are tastier.
As long as two thousand years ago, the Chinese were eating them dried. Boa constrictors, cobras, pythons, and rattlesnakes