Voracious
Page 15
Early in the novel, Tolstoy gives readers a glimpse into the moral character of two of the novel’s leading men, Konstantin Levin and Stepan Oblonsky, by showing us what, and how, they eat at a restaurant. Oblonsky handles the ordering, making it clear not only that he has a large appetite, but also that he is used to eating in fine restaurants. He demands “two, or no, that’s not enough, three dozen oysters, vegetable soup… then turbot with a thick sauce, then roast beef, but see to it that it’s all right. Yes, some capon, and lastly, some preserve,” and as an afterthought he tacks on a bottle of Chablis and some Parmesan cheese.
Levin, who lives the simple life of a landowner and farmer, is uncomfortable during Oblonsky’s exchange with the waiter; he feels “out of his element in this restaurant, amid the confusion of guests coming and going, surrounded by the private rooms where men and women were dining together; everything was repugnant to his feelings—the whole outfit of bronzes and mirrors, the gas and the Tatars.” More than that, though, he fears that by participating in such lavishness, “the sentiment that occupied his soul would be defiled.”
He tells Oblonsky that what he would really like is some shchi—a humble cabbage soup—or kasha, a simple buckwheat porridge, and eats his oysters hesitantly, wishing instead for cheese or white bread. When he realizes that Oblonsky is disappointed that he is not enjoying himself more, Levin explains, saying, “In the country we make haste to get through our meals so as to be at work again; but here you and I are doing our best to eat as long as possible without getting satisfied, and so we are eating oysters.”
Unlike Levin, Oblonsky devours his oysters in a way that is suggestive of his insatiable sexual appetite. He tears “the quivering oysters from their pearly shells with a silver fork and swallow[s] them one after another,” his eyes “moist and glittering” with satisfaction. “The aim of civilization,” he tells Levin, “is to translate everything into enjoyment,” to which Levin responds, “If that is its aim, I should prefer to be a savage.” Levin responds in a similar manner when the notion of infidelity comes up later on, telling Oblonsky (a known adulterer) that cheating is like emerging full from dinner and then stealing a loaf of bread from a bakery. Oblonsky replies, “Bread sometimes smells so good, that one cannot resist the temptation,” and asks, “What is to be done?” Levin answers simply, “Don’t steal fresh bread.”
For Levin, food and morality are closely linked, and the same was true for Leo Tolstoy. While Tolstoy was writing Anna Karenina in the 1870s, he was also undergoing a major spiritual transformation, a significant aspect of which included becoming a strict vegetarian. Tolstoy wrote passionately about his renunciation of “flesh-meat” in several essays, detailing the horrors of nineteenth-century Russian slaughterhouses, and speaking to farmers and butchers about the impact that killing and eating animals had on their spirit. Tolstoy believed that eating meat was not only immoral, because of the suffering it caused other living creatures, but that it blocked man’s path to spiritual enlightenment by suppressing his capacity for “sympathy and pity toward other living creatures like himself.”
Of all the food in Oblonsky and Levin’s dinner that is ripe for re-creating—vegetable soup, turbot in a thick sauce, roast beef and capon—I chose to focus on the oysters because of their complicated moral standing in the world of vegetarianism and veganism. A handful of the vegans and vegetarians I know eat oysters because, they argue, they are biologically indistinguishable from plants in that they cannot feel pain and are not motile. They argue also that farming them has little to no impact on the environment, and can actually be beneficial for water quality. Other vegans and vegetarians maintain that this is a ridiculous position, that oysters are living creatures and therefore should not be consumed. It’s an interesting debate, and I sincerely wish we could have gotten Tolstoy’s view on it. For now, though, let’s conjure Oblonsky, for whom eating is “one of the pleasures of life,” and enjoy these oysters.
ANNA KARENINA
Oysters and Cucumber Mignonette
Makes 3 dozen oysters with sauce
1 cup champagne vinegar
2 teaspoons sugar
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup minced shallots
1 cup peeled and finely minced hothouse cucumber
1½ teaspoons coarsely ground black pepper
36 oysters, shucked
In a large, nonreactive bowl, whisk the champagne vinegar, sugar, and salt until they are completely dissolved. Add the minced shallots, cucumber, and pepper and mix to combine. Spoon onto oysters and enjoy.
The Bluest Eye
CONCORD GRAPE SORBET
When I moved to Brooklyn what feels like ten lifetimes ago, it was the hottest, thickest part of July. An ominous black mold crept across the ceiling in the bathroom of my new apartment like sponge paint, thriving in the dense humidity. In the kitchen, my feet stuck to a mysterious blue substance that no amount of elbow grease could remove, and there were cockroaches, droves of them, their burned sugar shells lounging in the drains and scurrying across the walls. (Sorry I never told you this, Mom and Dad.)
The first night there was a ground-shaking thunderstorm—not the kind that you cuddle up against, but the kind that actually terrifies you. I bought a frozen pizza and a bottle of wine, only to remember that the gas hadn’t yet been turned on, so I couldn’t use my oven, and I had left my wine key behind in my former apartment. I bought a honey-dipped donut from the deli next door, sat on the gray-blue carpet of my bedroom floor, and cried myself exhausted.
The next morning I pulled myself out of bed early and immediately set to scrubbing, scraping, and bleaching. When I opened my kitchen window to air out the smell of cleaning chemicals, I noticed for the first time a delicate green vine creeping and curling along the bricks of my building and wrapping itself around the fire escape. Even though it was too early for the plant to bear any fruit, I recognized it immediately as a Concord grapevine.
There was a house on the street where I grew up that was covered on one side with Concord grapevines, and my friends and I spent many a crisp fall afternoon gorging ourselves on the grapes. They are one of the only fruits that truly taste like their artificial imitation, which is one of the reasons I loved them so much as a kid—they tasted like Welch’s grape jelly and purple Bazooka gum. Eating them always felt like something I shouldn’t be doing (and seeing as I was stealing them from a neighbor’s yard, that feeling was probably valid).
Maybe it’s from the five months I spent in college writing a paper on food imagery in Toni Morrison novels, but I rarely eat grapes without thinking of her. Nobody can make produce sexy quite like Morrison can—her plants sway their hips, her fruits swell and bloom, her berries run over with juice. Grapes make an appearance in almost all of her novels—in Beloved there is Mr. Garner’s grape arbor, which yields “grapes so little and tight. Sour as vinegar too.” In Song of Solomon Pilate makes wine from piles of grapes and the women eat the leftovers with hot bread and butter. In Paradise statues of Christ and the Virgin Mary are strangled by overgrown grapevines, and in Jazz there is Treason River, surrounded by hills covered in wild grapes.
My favorite of all of Morrison’s grape passages, however, takes place in The Bluest Eye, when Cholly and Darlene chase each other through a field of muscadine, tossing the grapes at each other and lying down, their mouths “full of the taste of muscadine, listening to the pine needles rustling loudly in their anticipation of rain.”
The grapes in this passage are ripe with possibility and promise—tasting their sourness is simply a reminder of what sweetness will eventually come. When I started seeing Concord grapes in the market a few weeks ago, I immediately thought of this book and that lonely, homesick time that feels so long ago now, when the grapes outside my window signaled to me not only respite from the heat of summer but also a time when my apartment might finally feel like my home.
The grapes on my fire escape are long gone now—my crazy landlord came at them with a weed w
hacker one day, convinced they were causing a bee infestation (I cried then, too), but my excitement over seeing them in the market hasn’t faltered. This sorbet is a perfect way to enjoy their sweet, musky flavor. The lemon cuts the grapes’ sweetness, and the wine makes their flavor a little more grown-up than the grape Popsicles of childhood. It is perfect on its own, in a cocktail, or sopped up with olive oil cake.
THE BLUEST EYE
Concord Grape Sorbet
Corn syrup keeps ice crystals from forming in the sorbet. If you don’t mind the crystals, you can use 6 tablespoons mild honey instead.
Makes about 1 quart
2½ pounds Concord grapes, stemmed and seeded (you can seed them in a food mill or a cherry pitter, or by hand with a knife)
½ cup corn syrup
¼ cup dry red wine
Juice of ½ a large lemon
Place the grapes in a food processor and blend until they form a smooth pulp. Transfer the pulp to a piece of cheesecloth set over a bowl and wring them out until all of the juice is released. Whisk the corn syrup, red wine, and lemon juice into the grape juice. Transfer the liquid to a small saucepan and cook over medium heat until the mixture just comes to a boil, about 5 minutes. Chill the base thoroughly and spin according to the ice cream maker’s instructions.
A Confederacy of Dunces
JELLY DONUTS
As kids, when my sisters and I were bored at church, we would write notes to each other on prayer cards with the stubby pencils tucked in front of the pews. Forty percent of it was pure nonsense—doodles and made-up words and outlandish “would you rather” scenarios. The other sixty percent of the time we asked each other simply, “If you could eat anything in the world at this very moment, what would it be?”
We answered from the depths of our stomachs, listened to our literal gut reactions, wrote the answers down earnestly, and passed the prayer cards back. At first, our cravings changed from moment to moment, swinging willy-nilly from fried chicken to Sour Patch Kids and getting progressively less coherent as our tights got itchier and our stomachs grumbled more loudly. Eventually, though, the game got boring. It wasn’t that we ran out of foods to dream up, it was just that we had all settled on our favorites—our “desert island foods,” as we called them. Mine was always mashed potatoes with cheddar cheese, Gemma always said extra-crispy French fries, and Ande always, always wanted a warm jelly donut.
Donuts are and always have been one of my favorite foods. Growing up I generally opted for the cake variety. I found it hard to determine whether yeasted donuts actually tasted like anything, or if all I was tasting was their filled centers. Jelly-filled in particular was always my least favorite donut—I found the squidgy center disconcerting and the jelly overly sweet and alarmingly red. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized the error of my ways—the most significant of which was that I had only ever tried a Dunkin’ Donuts jelly donut. A few years ago, around Hanukkah, my friend took me to the neighborhood where he grew up in Borough Park, Brooklyn, and brought me to Weiss Kosher Bakery, home of the “heartburn-free donut,” the best sufganiyot I’ve ever had.
Weiss’s sells about 40,000 donuts during Hanukkah, a staggering number, especially if you’ve seen their ancient Hobart mixer and two-at-a-time filling-stuffer. I ate so many of those airy, raspberry jelly–filled delicacies that day that I had to curl my knees up to my chest and fall asleep on the subway ride home.
The cruelest part of the story is that despite how sick I was that night, I still woke up craving those jelly donuts the next morning. Lying in bed, all I could think about was how dangerously close I was to becoming Ignatius J. Reilly, the gluttonous main character of John Kennedy Toole’s posthumously published novel, A Confederacy of Dunces. There has hardly ever been a more repulsive and unlikable antihero than Ignatius.
Walker Percy, who was instrumental in getting A Confederacy of Dunces published eleven years after John Kennedy Toole committed suicide, called Ignatius a “slob extraordinary, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one.” He is lazy and selfish and, at thirty years old, still living with his mother, whom he treats like his personal waitress. While hot dogs are Ignatius’s “desert island food,” he is also a huge fan of jelly donuts. Early on in the book Ignatius casually mentions that he loves jelly donuts, and his mother immediately rushes out to a shop on Magazine Street in New Orleans and buys him two dozen of them. He eats nearly all twenty-four and sucks the jelly out of the ones he doesn’t eat. The passage is one of the first glimpses into how unhealthy Ignatius’s relationships with both food and his mother are.
When Patrolman Mancuso comes over, Ignatius’s mother offers him a donut from the ravaged, grease-stained donut box, which “looked as if it had been subjected to unusual abuse during someone’s attempt to take all of the donuts at once.” All that is left inside the box are “two withered pieces of donut, out of which, judging by their moist edges, the jelly had been sucked.” Not surprisingly, Patrolman Mancuso passes on the offer.
Don’t let Ignatius’s (or my) gluttony deter you—you need to make these donuts.
A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES
Jelly Donuts
Be forewarned that this is not a quick recipe. It takes some planning, but it’s really worth it. The long rise in the refrigerator gives the yeast time to ferment, which will give the donuts a wonderful flavor and texture. Whenever I make yeast donuts I like to first make what’s called a “yeast sponge,” which you will see in the first part of the recipe instructions. This is a concentrated yeast dough that ferments on its own for a couple of hours before being added to the main dough. It’s a game changer as far as donut making goes; it ensures that the delicious yeasty flavor of the donut will overpower the flavor of fry-oil and jelly.
Makes 30 to 40 small (2-inch) donuts
Yeast Sponge
2¼ teaspoons (1 packet) active dry yeast (not instant)
¼ cup warm water (110°F)
¼ cup pastry flour
Donuts
2¼ teaspoons (1 packet) active dry yeast (not instant)
1 cup warm milk (110°F)
4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled a bit
3 large egg yolks
3½ cups pastry flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1½ teaspoons kosher salt
8 cups canola oil, for frying
2 cups sugar, for rolling
2 cups seedless jelly of your choice
Make the Yeast Sponge:
In a small bowl, dissolve the yeast in the warm water and mix in the flour until fully combined. Cover with a towel and leave in a warm place until bubbly and doubled in size, about 2 hours.
Make the Donuts:
In a small bowl, dissolve the yeast in the warm milk.
Transfer the yeast sponge to the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook attachment. With the mixer running on low, add the milk-yeast mixture, the butter, and the egg yolks.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the pastry flour, sugar, and salt. Add these dry ingredients to the wet in three batches. Knead on medium speed until the dough is pulling away from the sides of the bowl and forming a ball around the dough hook, about 3 minutes.
Transfer the dough to a large oiled bowl. Cover with a towel and place in the fridge to proof for 12 to 16 hours.
Turn out the dough onto a floured surface and roll it to about ½ inch thick. Cut with whatever circle cutter size you prefer—I made 30 mini (2-inch) donuts and 4 big (3½-inch) donuts. You can reroll the scraps once; just bring the dough back into a ball and let it rest for 5 minutes or so.
After punching out the donuts, lay them on a piece of oiled parchment and let them rise in a warm place for 30 minutes.
When you’re ready to fry, heat the canola oil in a Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed large pot over medium-high heat until it reaches 350°F. Fry the donuts in batches, making sure you keep the temperature at or around 350°F. Change the oil if i
t gets too filled with dough debris. My 2-inch donuts were done after 1 minute per side and my 3½-inch donuts were done after 2½ minutes per side.
Toss the fried donuts in a bowl of sugar while they are still warm, poke a hole in them with a skewer or a small knife, load up a pastry bag with jelly, and fill those suckers up.
The Dog Stars
WHOLE ROASTED TROUT
I have never been a fan of postapocalyptic literature. The world, to me, is terrifying and confusing enough on a daily basis without all of the fire and brimstone, collapsing buildings, and dwindling food supplies. In college I tried reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road because I was smitten with a guy who said it was his favorite book. “The Road,” he told me, “is full of adventure and friendship and humor. It changed my entire view of what it means to be a man.” We were eating comically large burgers at Paul’s on St. Mark’s Place and talking, in the earnest and embarrassing way that college students do, about books that we felt defined us. I remember thinking vaguely, as he wiped melted cheese from his mouth, that I would be a bit mortified if anyone was eavesdropping on our conversation.
When we had finished our burgers I walked over to the bookstore. The Road had just come out a few months earlier and was still prominently displayed in the front window of the shop. The man at the counter shuddered while ringing it up—“You’re brave for this one, girly,” he told me, pushing it into my hands so eagerly it was as if the cover was burning his. I made it through about twenty pages on my subway ride home and by the time I walked in my front door and looked in the mirror my face was ashen and my knees felt like Jell-O. After fifty pages I was in a cold sweat and had to tuck the book into a drawer in the other room before trying to fall asleep. Adventure? Friendship? Humor? Had he even read this book? I felt betrayed.