The Book of Salt - Monique Truong [84]
Miss Toklas's approach to knitting is the same as her approach to cooking. Take lamb à la Toklas, for instance. (This is my name for the dish, not hers. Too immodest a gesture, she would think.) In the early spring, American dinner guests at 27 rue de Fleurus are often served lamb. Only the Americans. Miss Toklas thinks that French lamb is wasted on the French. They have grown up with it, have come to expect it. But the Americans, they come to her table in ignorance, and it is they who will depart her table in bliss. On these occasions, Miss Toklas insists on pré-salé lamb, roasted simply in a disappearing swath of butter and served without sauce, condiment, or even a sprig of mint. Just a hunk of perfectly browned meat placed in the middle of an oval platter. The stark presentation is met with polite words of praise. Hypocrites, Miss Toklas thinks. She finds it most distressing that the world is so filled with people who flatter and eulogize before ever tasting. Miss Toklas would never waste her words in this way. Admire the china pattern, the crystal wine goblets, the hothouse blooms, but never compliment the food on sight alone. Wait until it has reached your tongue. After all, the tongue is an organ of truth. It cannot pretend to find flavors where there are none. Nor can it ignore the slip-slime of undercooked chicken, the aggressive tang of soured milk, burnt sugar's pervasive iron fumes. Miss Toklas is no fool. She knows and she expects that the lamb on sight alone will be sure to disappoint, raise invisible eyebrows about her supposed culinary skills. Ah, but then the lamb is carved and it is eaten and it is never forgotten.
Pré-salé lambs are named for the salt marshes along the northern coast of France where they graze. Saltwater overflows onto flat stretches of land and leaves behind a sweet mix of herbs and flora. Elemental and tender, pré-salé lambs are salted and seasoned from the raw beginning. Now that, Miss Toklas thinks, is forethought. The first bite is a revelation of flavors, infused and deep. The second bite is a reminder of why we kill and eat the young. The third allows the brain back into the fray to ask, But how is it possible? Not a visible grind of pepper, a milky grain of salt, not even the faintest traces of rosemary, wild fennel, or thyme, and yet the lamb gives all this and more. Yes, intrigue is what my Madame aspires to in all of her creations.
GertrudeStein's waiting kit consists of a stack of blank notebooks, lined and margined for schoolchildren to use, and a box of sharpened pencils. Ink is absolutely out of the question. Even when she is sitting at a proper table, ink runs from her fingertips to her face and through her hair. Ink always finds her sleeves and too often the front of her shirt. Miss Toklas tells GertrudeStein that she should replace brown—the color that gives her Lovey's wardrobe its distinctly uniform-like quality—with the even more practical black. Not only would it hide dirt, which is the only reason Miss Toklas can imagine for wearing the color brown, but black would also hide the ink. GertrudeStein thinks it is an excellent idea until she sees the slyness, a green snake below the water's surface, in Miss Toklas's eyes. GertrudeStein rumbles and Miss Toklas smirks. And it is in this manner, with their waiting kits in hand, that my Mesdames are so often found by the side of the road. Miss Toklas never panics. Her heart keeps its steady beat. She understands that this tableau that she and GertrudeStein present to passersby is universally seen as a beacon for help. Miss Toklas knows from all the cowboy stories that GertrudeStein has insisted on reading aloud to her (whenever the detective stories are set aside) that there is nothing more foreboding within the landscape of rocky mountain ranges and a blue blanket sky than the sight of a