Have Blade Will Travel: The adventures of a traveling chef (2 page)

Only a cuisine rooted in antiquity could have spawned a chicken stock with a “creaminess” dependent on technique rather than the addition of a dairy product.  Cream stock is also a dish connected to the cooking styles of both the very poor and the very rich: the poor because they must make do with few and inexpensive ingredients; the rich because those who cook for their tables are expected to make everything as flavorful as possible. 

Cream Stock
requires time, rather than rare or costly ingredients – and it violates a fundamental rule of stock production, at least in the Western mode.  One begins by cracking chicken bones and slicing the flesh of chicken and pork – so as to promote the later extraction of internal juices and proteins.  The meat and bones are then simmered for ninety-minutes, as the fat and albumen are carefully skimmed from the top of the simmering stock.  Then the bones and flesh are removed from the stock and massaged – massaged indeed! – in cold water, then returned to the simmering brew, along with the cold massage water, and boiled rapidly for another two-and-a-half hours.

Normally, the Saucier’s goal is a clear, flavorful stock, attained by the slow, careful simmering of the ingredients.  But Cream Stock owes its rich, turbid characteristics to the rapid boiling that violates the traditional Western rules of stock creation – the prolonged rapid movement disperses the fat and microscopic particles, thus and creating a “creamy” stock. 

Clear stocks also have a place in Chinese cookery – and it was a Cantonese cook who shared with me a very fine trick for making a beautifully clear chicken stock.*  But Cream Stock is unique, however, as well as essential for creating a whole range of dishes, including
Happy Family
.

* NB: The Chicken Stock secret, involves straining the first round of stock, by discarding the liquid, rinsing the bones again, in cold water, then returning them to the stock pot, covered again with cold water, brought to a boil, turned down to a simmer, skimmed, aromatics added (celery, onion, leek greens, herbs), then simmered gently for 6-to-8 hours.  The resulting stock will be crystal-clear and full-flavored.

As I was marveling at the engaging terminology, my parents were getting ready to order, and of course there was no way that I was going to miss out on the experience of something called
Egg Drop Soup
.   And so, I requested this dish – whose name had intrigued me – for denoting a form of action.

Now there is nothing particularly extraordinary about
Egg Drop Soup
in appearance, aroma or flavor.  In fact, it is a rather drab dish – pale yellow, and quite elemental as far as ingredients are concerned.  No roasted pork, no won-tons stuffed with shrimp and ginger, no greens to liven it up – just plain chicken broth, a little murky, slightly thickened with cornstarch, and filled with paper-thin ribbons of poached egg.  My parents ordered it for me, and when it arrived I examined it closely as I sipped it, making mental notes of everything, from its thickness and aroma and flavor, to how it sat in my spoon.  I tried to imagine how it was prepared, and of the part “dropped” eggs played in its creation.  And before I was done, I knew I was going to attempt to recreate it myself.

In the days that followed, I prepared the dish over and over in my mind, until I was fully confident that I could prepare it.  On weekday evenings, I was typically in charge of preparing dinner for the family (Mom was divorced by then), and serving that dinner when she arrived home from work. 

On the chosen day, arriving home from school, I knocked out my chores for that afternoon, then entered the kitchen and got to work.  First, I slid a chair up to the stove.  Then I set a pot on a burner, filled it half full with water, and turned on the fire.  I brought out the eggs, and while the water was heating up, assembled the remaining mise-en-place: a shaker of salt and a wooden spoon – on the left side of course, as I am left-handed.  I stepped up on to the chair and waited for the water to come to a boil.  I believed that boiling was the secret to creating the paper-thin egg ribbons that were the earmark of a proper
Egg Drop Soup
.  Finally the water began to roll.  I surveyed my station and determined I was ready to begin. 

I picked up an egg, cracked it on the edge of the pot, dropped it into the boiling water, threw the shells down immediately, grabbed the spoon, and stirred briskly.  That was the motion you needed, the rapid stirring, to create the soft, paper-thin egg ribbons.  Within thirty seconds or so, the water began boiling again, and I observed carefully.  Where were the ribbons?  All I saw were egg blobs, bobbing up and down in the boiling water.  Of course I realized immediately that what it needed was more eggs.  I cracked another egg, dropped it in, and stirred rapidly.  Back to a boil.  Now there were twice as many egg blobs bobbing around in the boiling water.  I cracked another, then stirred again.  More egg blobs.  Cracked another.  Stir like crazy.  More blobs.  Another egg, and another, and another, until…no more eggs.  It’s got to be the eggs.  It needs more eggs! 

A bit frantic now, I climbed down from the chair and pulled another dozen eggs from the refrigerator and returned to the range – where a huge bobbing mass of egg blobs quivered atop the boiling water.  Just a few more eggs, and I would have my
Egg Drop Soup
for sure.  I was poised to drop the thirteenth egg into the mass when I heard my mother’s steps coming up the back stairs.  Uh-oh.  She walked into the kitchen, and I smiled a hopeful smile, wondering frantically what I would say when she discovered my unfinished creation. 

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m making
Egg Drop Soup
,” I told her.

She leaned over and peered into the pot, considering the contents.  Rather gently, as I recall, she inquired, “
Egg Drop Soup
? 
That’s
Egg Drop Soup
? 
What made you think you could make
Egg Drop Soup
?”

“From Ho King’s the other night,” I reminded her.  “Don’t you remember?  I had it for dinner.  I knew I could make it myself.  It’s easy.”

She seemed amused, or perhaps it was more like bemused… in spite of herself. “Well, you’ve made quite an effort.  But that’s not exactly Egg Drop Soup.  It looks more like a whole lot of boiled eggs.”

“I know,” I defended.  “But it isn’t done yet.  It needs more eggs.”  Oops. The smile disappeared. 

“No, it doesn’t need more eggs.  You’ve made a valiant try, but I’m sorry young man, that is never going to be
Egg Drop Soup
.”

“Oh.  You’re probably right,” I replied, my enthusiasm somewhat deflated.  “What should I do with it now?”

“Well, for one thing you’re not going to throw away,” she affirmed.  She looked down at the brew.  “How many eggs did you use?”

“Um… one box.”

“My God.  There are a dozen eggs in there?!?”  She rolled her eyes in a way I had never seen before.

“Um.  Yeah.  About a dozen.” 

“Boy, I hope you like Egg Salad, because you’re going to be eating it for a while.”

“Oh...um...no problem mom,” I declared.  “That’s great.  I love egg salad.  Especially Egg Drop Soup Egg Salad.  Actually, it’s my favorite.”

Years later, I realized that I had probably been spared serious punishment.  I also realized that my experiment was an effort to understand a lifelong interest in food – and I speculated that I had been a culinary practitioner in a previous life.  Accordingly, unresolved issues in that life were carried into this one, bringing with them an intense interest in, and attraction to everything of a gastronomic nature.  In this scenario the ego insists on nothing less than the reincarnated spirit of Antoine Beauvillier, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, Curnonsky, Dunand, Li Yü, or some other ancient gastronome of note.  But in truth, if that had been the case, there would be little to resolve in this life.  For Beauvillier, Brillet-Savarin, Curnonsky, Dunand and Li Yü were among a handful of notable gourmets, restaurateurs, and food writers who had made significant contributions to their craft during their lifetime.

But for my Theory of Reincarnation to work in this particular case, I would have had to have been involved in the preparation of food in some way during a past life, but without completing a life’s work in that arena.  I subsequently theorized that I had been in a more humble position–a kitchen minion in the home of an Etruscan nobleman, circa 500 BC; perhaps an aide-de-camp to Charlemagne in his 9 th-century court in Aachen; or a pâtissier in the Fifth Avenue mansion of Diamond Jim Brady.  (In this theory of reincarnation, by the way, there was no exclusivity with regard to either gender or age.)  Whether my theory was accurate or not, I concluded that the impact of that first evening in a public dining establishment was probably due to a variety of influences: a past life experience perhaps, combined with a healthy appetite, the excitement of experiencing new surroundings, and a relatively agreeable evening in the company of my parents and two young sisters.

Just as Rod Serling and
The Twilight Zone
saved our family from the banalities of sitcom television and the dysfunctional family lies spun from the idiot box in the center of our living room, James Beard and Julia Child saved us from the tasteless, insipid, manufactured substances that our culture mistook for food. 
The Fireside Cook Book
, Beard’s first solo published work, was the first cookbook I used, and it remains on my bookshelf to this day.  As a consequence of
The Great Egg Drop Soup Calamity
, my Mom realized I had significant interest in culinary matters, and put it into my tender hands.  That it had been published in 1949, my bir th-year, gave it an added significance.  One evening soon thereafter, and under her tutelage, I prepared
Veal Parmigiana
, a fairly complex dish for a youngster of eight, and it was an undeniable success.

The
Fireside Cook Book
was a guide to preparing European-style dishes in contemporary American kitchens, with an American slant.  By today’s standards it is a bit retro and somewhat corny, but for its day it was full of personality and fresh ideas.  The illustrations, by Alice and Martin Provensen, are also old-fashioned by today’s standards, but they are an indispensable part of the book’s character, and to this day I find them innocent and childlike.

As for Julia, I was thirteen years of age when she began her show on NET – National Educational Television – the old channel 13 and the precursor to PBS.  One rainy Saturday afternoon, I watched as she prepared a lobster dish, taking careful notes as she worked.  Ucertain of the exact name of the dish, I wrote  down “Lobster au Something-or-other” – though having begun a junior high school class French conversation, I soon understood the proper name,
Homard à l’Americaine
.

Lobster Americaine – as it is commonly called in English, was the creation of Pierre Fraisse, the proprietor of Peter’s, a restaurant on the Passage des Princes, Paris, in 1854.  Fraisse, who had lived and worked in the United States, had innovated the dish for a wealthy American patron, and later offered it, along with a number of other American dishes on his menu at Peter’s.  Fraisse also introduced Turtle Soup, as well as the custom of slicing roast beef at tableside to the customer’s specifications.  Peter’s was later sold, renamed Noel Peter’s, and became known for pioneering the concept of a “plat du jour” which changed daily.

Aside from Miss Julia’s pronunciation of
Homard à l’Americaine
, there was something else I failed to understand, or at least to register.  The homard she was cutting up was alive.  She wasn’t sadistic.  She simply had no choice.  The naturally occurring enzymes in the lobster’s digestive tract begin to decompose its flesh the instant the creature expires, literally disintegrating it within a few hours.  So Julia’s dish, like all lobster dishes, required that its primary ingredient, the lobster, start out alive.  Like most ten-year-olds in 20 th-century America, I had no conception of the ordeals innocent creatures suffer to become ingredients in culinary masterpieces.  Children of agricultural or hunter-gatherer cultures grow up taking all that for granted, but not city-bred kids like me.  As I watched, my entire focus was on learning the method of preparation being demonstrated by the affable Ms. Julia.  It would be several years before I developed the empathy to recognize the slaughter and was forced to deal with it. 

― ● ―

Homard à l’Americaine

4 – 2-pound (4 – 1 kg) lobsters

¼ cup (60 mL) olive oil

1 shallot, peeled and minced

½ cup (120 mL) Spanish onion, finely chopped

2 stalks celery, finely chopped

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 cup (240 mL) Cognac

1 cup (240 mL) dry white wine

1 bay leaf

1 bunch parsley stems & 2 sprigs tarragon, tied together with cotton twine

6 vine-ripened (or equivalent canned) tomatoes, roughly chopped

½ pound (¼ kg) unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch (12 mm) pieces

salt and cayenne pepper to taste

½ cup (120 mL) parsley, finely chopped

• On a cutting board on top of a small pan, cut the lobsters in half, and separate the tail from the main body.  Split the tails in half, then remove the claws, and crack with the heel of the knife.  Cut the body into about eight pieces, saving all juices that runs out of the lobster.  Season lightly with salt.
  
• Heat the olive oil over a medium flame, then sauté the lobster pieces for several minutes, or until they turn bright red.  Remove from the fire, and transfer the lobster pieces to a serving platter.  When cool enough to handle, remove the meat from the tail and claws, and cut into 1-inch (25 mm) pieces.  Set the meat aside, discard the claw shells, and reserve the tail shells and body pieces.
  
• Sauté the shallot, onion, celery and garlic in the olive oil for several minutes.  Add the cognac, ignite, and allow the flame to die out.  Add the white wine, the herbs, tomatoes, any juices collected when cutting the lobster, and the lobster shells to the pan.  Cover, and gently simmer for 20 minutes.
  
• Strain the sauce through a fine sieve, making sure to extract all of the liquid. Return this sauce to the pan, and bring to a boil.  Add the cut up butter, stirring continuously, under all of the butter is incorporated.  Add the tail and claw meat.  Season to taste with salt and cayenne pepper.  Serve on an appropriate platter, using the tail shells to hold the lobster and sauce.  Garnish with parsley sprigs.