The Man Who Ate Everything - Jeffrey Steingarten [197]
A cookbook from seventeenth-century England includes tricks for “ye boyleing of yellow peese” and a special way “to boyle Spinage green,” but nothing about bungled batter.
Dinnertime crept closer. As I stood moodily at the window, I considered following the example of the great Vatel. In April 1671, Vatel was chef to the prince of Condé and had been engaged to organize the visit of King Louis XIV and its climactic dinner for three thousand guests. Madame de Sévigné tells the story in her April 26 letter to Madame de Grignan: Vatel had gone twelve nights without sleep. The king arrived on Thursday; there were “hunting, lanterns, moonlight, a gentle walk, supper served in a spot carpeted with daffodils. [But] there was no roast at one or two tables because of several unexpected guests.” Vatel was humiliated. Then the fireworks, which had cost sixteen thousand francs, were a failure owing to fog.
At four the next morning, Vatel rushed madly around, trying to assemble the fish for Friday’s dinner. When a supplier erroneously informed him that only two small loads of fish could be found, the great Vatel “went to his room, put his sword up against the door, and ran it through his heart.” Just then, great quantities of fish began to arrive.
If I lived above the third floor, I might even now be with the great Vatel. But in the nick of time I came to my senses, drew back from the window, and returned to my kitchen manuals.
Some of them specialize in cleanliness instead of cuisine. They say you can shine copper pots by rubbing them with a paste of flour, vinegar, and salt. (It works only a third as well as copper polish.) Or try baking soda, which was used to clean the inside skin of the Statue of Liberty. A Philippine book of household hints recommends rubbing a halved calamansi on your wooden cutting board to remove discoloration. But I cannot find calamansi in any dictionary. Is Colgate toothpaste ideal for polishing silverware and gold, as one book suggests? Pick up pieces of shattered glass with a slice of white bread, another book advises, and take your dirty miniblinds to a car wash. (Then what?) According to the Wisk 1995 Cleaning Census, 38 percent of Americans who do laundry at least once a month are very or somewhat worried that home entertaining may ruin their possessions. Dial (800) ASK-WISK for advice about cleaning. But not about hideously separated fresh coconut cake batter. I tried.
The Dazey Stripper
It was in 1972 near the Cenote de los Sacrificios at the ruins of Chichén Itzá in the Yucatán—a sacred well or cistern where vestal virgins were sacrificed to the Mayan gods—that I first encountered the automatic fruit and vegetable peeler. After a long trudge under the merciless sun and a cursory glance at the bottomless Cenote, in which not even one vestal virgin could be glimpsed, I saw an old woman sitting nearby on a folding chair behind a shiny steel hand-cranked peeler mounted on a tall wooden stand. For twenty-five cents U.S., she peeled oranges and apples and sold them to thirsty tourists. For an extra twenty-five cents U.S., she let me play with her peeler.
Years later at a dinner party I discovered the Dazey Stripper in my hostess’s kitchen while she was busy serving drinks in the living room. I inserted a nearby apple, stood back, and watched in wonder as the Dazey Stripper rapidly and automatically removed the peel in one continuous band. As I also learned, just as my hostess returned to the kitchen, the Dazey Stripper just as rapidly and automatically splatters ripe peaches all over the wall.
That’s because the Dazey Stripper was designed to peel firm fruits and vegetables. It is a compact, white plastic electric instrument consisting of an oblong platform from which a vertical shaft rises. You place a fruit or vegetable between two spiked plastic holders, raise the cutting blade assembly to the top of the shaft, and let it go. Automatically, the motor starts up, the fruit whirls around,