What We Eat When We Eat Alone - Deborah Madison [74]
“I would have to say oysters, followed by crab, followed by sushi,” she says, “maybe with honey panna cotta for dessert, to keep up our strength.”
“I would never suggest sushi,” declares another woman, “because your mouth is full the whole time. That could be sort of awkward. Sushi is better for a third date.”
But that awkwardness could be part of the charm. You’d have to end up laughing at your bulging cheeks and a too-large dab of wasabi tweaking your nostrils while effectively destroying the subtle work of the sushi chef. But why be in a restaurant for a seduction meal?
Here’s a menu from a single man we met in Greece, on a tour of Chios, where we went to learn about mastic, an aromatic, resinous substance that issues from cuts in a tree related to the pistachio. “Oysters to start. Fresh fruit wine from Limnos. An average-sized meal.” Then he goes on to include veal, with dried peaches in winter, or duck with orange. And mastic ice cream with a jam of pistachio or rose flowers for dessert. “Finish with a liquor for the seduction,” he concludes, “and tell me if it works.”
The mastic makes an alluring stretchy sort of ice cream with a hint of pine. We don’t really have an equivalent food in the United States that I can think of. Marshmallows maybe, but even they don’t come close. For some, the mastic ice cream might bypass the oysters altogether, especially with the addition of rose petals.
Another traveler looks to the oyster for a promising beginning of a far more modest meal. “Start with grilled oysters wrapped in pancetta with a balsamic vinegar sauce,” he suggests, “then have angel-hair pasta aglio-olio, with long-cooked rapini. Serve up a platter of lemon-seared sea scallops. And after that, a warm custard for dessert with shortbread.”
The warm custard makes a brilliant finish for this menu. Soft, silky eggs and cream, such primitive stuff to fall into. The land equivalent of shellfish. The shortbread offers just enough crunch to keep things lively, but the pieces need to be tiny, our friend advises, or they’ll be too filling. Besides, any leftovers will be great for breakfast the next morning, along with the custard.
Egg dishes, especially custards and soufflés, do strike a primal note and they come up often. When I took my twenty-year-old niece, Lindsay, to dinner at Chez Panisse, we were invited to eat in the kitchen, which gave us a chance to chat with the cooks and waiters as we ate and they worked. During the lull between seatings, Phillip Dedlow, one of the cooks, said to Lindsay out of the blue, “Every girl needs to learn how to cook, swim, and shoot. If there’s someone in your life you wish to entice, you might want to make a soufflé.”
She arched an eyebrow and I recalled that no one gave me any such advice when I was twenty. (Lucky girl!) At that moment, Phillip was in fact whipping up egg whites for a leek-and-spinach-pudding soufflé that would be served surrounded with sautéed chanterelles and their honey--colored juices. We had eaten this dish an hour earlier and I had quietly nominated it as a seductive one. The eggy tenderness and the fragrant, woodsy mushrooms suggested a blend of comfort that inspired trust, and mystery, which promised adventure.
“So what would your menu be if you wanted to seduce someone?” I asked, hoping that I wasn’t violating any unspoken rules.
He considered his options as he folded the beaten whites into the soufflé base, then said, “Oysters. Olympias. They’re rare. In fact, the best thing about them is that she knows you had to look hard to find them. You can’t just go get them at the store. Then,” he continued as he ladled the batter into ramekins while musing about what might follow the little Olympias, “I think a simple, beautiful broth, maybe a chicken broth, because broths are soothing. They’re hot and warming, but also light. I might have some pasta in it, some fresh noodles infused with saffron and sautéed woodsy mushrooms, porcini or chanterelles. Then a little hanger steak, plus beef