Life Is Meals_ A Food Lover's Book of Days - James Salter [84]
The usual proportion for brewing real tea is one teaspoon of black or green leaves for every six ounces—not quite a cup—of water. The water should be cold and fresh to begin—soft water, preferably since it improves the final quality. The pot should be preheated by filling it for a few minutes with hot water, emptying it, then adding tea leaves. When the tea water reaches a rolling boil, it is immediately poured over the leaves. The famous English dictum is: Always bring the pot to the kettle, never bring the kettle to the pot.
Allow the tea to steep for three to five minutes while the leaves open and release their full flavor. Stir and serve, pouring through a small strainer specially made for the purpose. (Under field conditions, as they say, the leaves will remain for the most part in the bottom of the pot if about an inch of boiling water is poured in first, allowing them to expand and settle.)
Cover the pot with a tea cozy, if you can ever find one to buy.
Italians, French, and Americans drink coffee. Turks and Germans also. The Chinese, Japanese, and English drink tea. Tea, Russian-style, is served in a glass with lemon. English-style is often with milk. The five o’clock English tea with small sandwiches, scones, cakes, and so forth is said to have been created by the Duchess of Bedford in the early 1800s, when dinners were very late.
Most Indian teas are black, with Assam and Darjeeling among the best known.
CHATEAUBRIAND
In a house built into the ramparts of Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, François René de Chateaubriand was born on this day in 1768. The last of ten children and son of a prosperous ship owner and captain, he was buried here, too, in 1848, on a small rocky outcropping called Grand Be Island, which can be reached on foot only at low tide. According to his wishes, there is no name or date on the grave, only a cross large enough to be seen from shore.
Chateaubriand, whose rich, romantic prose and tragic love stories made him the most important French writer of the time, served in Napoleon’s government but eventually became disillusioned and anti-Bonapartist. Later, he was ambassador to London for the Bourbons and then minister of foreign affairs. Famous for his books and his love affairs, his name is now best known for the steak created in his honor by Montmireil, his chef at the embassy in London. Cut a couple of inches thick from the tenderloin, the beef is slathered with butter, seasoned with pepper, and grilled or broiled. It is usually considered a dish for two and is often cut into thin slices, topped with a mixture of butter and parsley, and served with a béarnaise sauce.
FALERNIAN
In Caesar’s time, there were already Roman vineyards in the Rhône Valley and around Bordeaux that laid the foundation for the great modern wines that were to come.
The most famed Roman wine, Falernian, “the wine of the emperors,” not in existence today, was of three types: a dry white, a sweetish yellow presumably like a Sauternes, and a red. It was extremely long-lived, and the great vintage of 121 B.C. was still being drunk, it was said, a century later. The poet Horace praised Falernian, though it was too expensive for him to drink, he complained, the Château Pétrus of its day.
SALSA
You can assess the quality of any Mexican restaurant by one of the first things brought to the table: the salsa. The word itself is Spanish for “sauce” or “gravy” and appears as early as 1571 in accounts of conquistadors in the New World.
The best is made fresh, and every restaurant—and Mexican home—has its own favored recipe, varying in consistency and hotness of ingredients, which include approximately equal amounts of chopped tomatoes—fresh or canned—and onions. Scallions are usually preferred, but regular onions—red, yellow, or white—are fine. Added to these and determining the degree of hotness are chopped green chili peppers and jalapeño peppers, again either fresh or canned. Chopped parsley, a bit of lime juice or vinegar, and salt also appear