Life Is Meals_ A Food Lover's Book of Days - James Salter [68]
DRESS
The Romans not only changed their shoes before entering the dining room, as the Greeks did, but changed their clothes as well, putting on a tunic for the occasion. Dishes were brought in accompanied by music.
In France before the 17th century, it was customary to wear a hat while eating. Even today in the Western world, ladies who wear hats to lunch keep them on. The French, incidentally, are taught to keep their hands in sight during a meal, while the English rest theirs in their laps.
Napkins are a relatively recent development. In the Middle Ages, people wiped their mouths on the tablecloth. Tying a napkin around one’s neck is practical but inelegant, except when eating seafood such as lobster. It is a mark, however, of a serious, usually older, and somewhat overweight diner, as in a Daumier drawing.
Dinner dress means black and white—tuxedo and black tie for men, and evening gowns, not necessarily black and white, for women. You can see it in the movies of the 1920s and ‘30s. In New York years ago, cops in the silk-stocking district of the Upper East Side knew how to tie a bow tie for a young man without the experience to do it himself.
LANG RULES
George Lang, the restaurateur and author of Nobody Knows the Truffles I’ve Seen, had a number of infallible rules for giving a successful dinner party. Among them were:
• Try to give the impression that the party is the first and last you will ever give and not just another in a long series.
• Serve familiar but not ordinary food.
• Seat the guests so that their neighbor is interesting for some reason, be it an occupation or a low-cut dress.
• Invite beautiful women.
• Choose the wine with care, as it is a clear indication of the importance the host gives the occasion.
DAIQUIRI
Ernest Hemingway was born on this day in 1899. Paris, bullfighting, Africa, Key West, and Spain were all glorified in his writing, as was Cuba and its classic rum drink, the daiquiri. The best Cuban rums are light and come from the area around Santiago de Cuba. It appears the daiquiri also originated there around 1900, when American mining engineers cooled off in the bar of the Venus Hotel after a sweltering day. They drank a mixture of rum, lime, ice, and sugar that came to be named for the mines, daiquiri.
Here is the version from the Floridita bar in Havana where Hemingway reigned.
DAIQUIRI
Juice of half a lime
1 teaspoon sugar
1 ½ ounces light rum
Dash of maraschino
1 cup crushed ice
Shake together all ingredients except the rum. Add rum. Shake until frost appears on the outside. Strain and serve. Makes one daiquiri.
BARBECUE
When meat was blackened from cooking too close to the coals on the grill, we used to joke that the charred parts were good roughage. It turns out, however, that among the dangers in barbecuing is eating the burned and fatty parts of the meat or chicken. This is where the compounds—HCAs—are formed that cause cancer in laboratory animals. The longer and hotter the meat is cooked and the more fat it contains, the more concentrated the carcinogens. Cutting the fat from the meat before cooking and then eating it rare (except for chicken) or medium is safer than making it well-done.
One of the most effective ways to minimize HCAs—for reasons still unknown—is to marinate meat, chicken, or fish for as little as fifteen minutes to an hour. Bottled marinades, however, often contain sugar or corn syrup, which, over a flame, carbonizes and promotes charring. A marinade light on oil and heavy on vinegar, lemon juice, or teriyaki works best. Don’t baste with the same liquid in which the meat was marinated. Instead, keep some aside to use during the actual cooking.
MARTINI
Bernard DeVoto, the critic and editor, called them the supreme American gift to world culture. E. B. White admitted he drank them the way other people took aspirin. All in all, a well-made