The Omnivore's Dilemma - Michael Pollan [207]
I’d been too busy worrying about the food to worry much about the company, whether this somewhat haphazard assortment of people would gel or not. A couple of paths had apparently crossed before, but most of the guests were strangers to one another; what linked everyone was foraging—and me. But as we settled into the living room with our glasses of wine, it didn’t take long for the stiffness of small talk to relax into conversation and for the conversation, oiled by Angelo’s excellent Syrah, to steadily gain altitude. The fava bean toasts and boar pâté drew appreciative murmurs and comments, launching a discussion about boar hunting. Anthony was curious to go some time, but warned Angelo that he doubted he could bring himself to actually shoot anything. “Maybe I could caddy for you,” he proposed. When the mood in the living room seemed to have attained a sustainable effervescence, I disappeared into the kitchen to ready the pasta course.
Within minutes Angelo appeared at my side, with an offer of help; I think he was a little worried I was in over my head. While we waited for the pasta water to come to a boil, I asked him to taste the morels. “It’s good, but maybe it needs a little more butter.” I handed him a stick and he dropped the whole thing in the pan. (So that’s how the professionals do it!)
We plated the pasta, and I called everyone to the table for dinner. Votives were lit, wine was poured, the perfume of thyme and morels filled the room, and I raised my glass for a toast. I’d actually meant to write out something earlier in the day, because I’d wanted to organize my thoughts on the meaning of the meal and everyone’s contribution to it, but the day had gotten away from me. So I kept it simple. I went around the table and spoke of each person’s contribution to my foraging education and to this meal that, though I had cooked most of it myself, was in the deepest sense our collaboration. I talked about Sue’s unprecedented generosity in sharing three of her choicest chanterelle spots (one of them right in the front yard of an unsuspecting homeowner in West Marin), and told the story of the afternoon we’d spent hunting mushrooms in a downpour—with nothing to show for it. I talked about Anthony’s gameness in allowing a complete, and completely green, stranger to accompany him hunting morels in the Sierra. I talked about hunting with Richard in Sonoma during that first failed outing, how it had taught me the importance of preparedness, and temperance, in hunting. And lastly I talked about all the many things I’d learned from Angelo—things about mushrooms and pigs, about nature and the arts of cooking and eating well, and so much else besides. Then, worried I was in danger of melting down into sentiment, I raised my glass again and urged everyone to start.
I had actually wanted to say something more, to express a wider gratitude for the meal we were about to eat, but I was afraid that to offer words of thanks for the pig and the mushrooms and the forests and the garden would come off sounding corny and, worse, might ruin some appetites. The words I was reaching for, of course, were the words of grace. But as the conversation at the table unfurled like a sail amid the happy clatter of silver, tacking from stories of hunting to mother lodes of mushrooms to abalone adventures, I realized that in this particular case words of grace were unnecessary. Why? Because that’s what the meal itself had become, for me certainly, but I suspect for some of the others, too: a wordless way of saying grace.
As you might expect from this crowd and occasion, the talk at the table was mainly about food. Yet this was not the usual food talk you hear nowadays; less about recipes and restaurants, it revolved around specific plants and animals and fungi, and the places where they lived. The stories told by this little band of foragers ventured a long way from the table, the