Choice Cuts
Page 43
They have to be because this is England, and we are English. We often eat well in our homes or in clubs or in small restaurants which have not yet been spoiled, but we do not demand good food in public, and when we eat upon an object that moves, such as a train or a boat, we expect, and generally get, absolute muck. Some people go in for complaining, cursing the waiters, calling for the manager, writing to the head office and so on, but complaints seem to me the wrong end of the stick. It is no use scorning a system which can’t understand how you feel. One of my friends, who does complain, was travelling recently upon a patriotic and pretentious liner. He laid about him at meals until one of his fellow passengers said acidly: ‘You seem somewhat hard to please.’ He replied: ‘I am not hard to please. I am merely trying to find some dish which a working-class boy would not throw in his mother’s face.’ This made all concerned sit up, but the menus continued as before. If you do not need prunes there is porridge; if you cannot manage the bottled coffee there is the stewy tea.
Well, I drink to the cuisine of my country in the glass of warm beer which was recently served me in a smart railway buffet at Birmingham. On that occasion I did complain. The barmaid turned pert and said: ‘Something warm ought to be just right for this cold day.’ Then she softened and said, yes, other customers had complained, too, but the only place she was given to keep the beer was over the hot water pipes. I drink in the beer which had to be kept over the hot water. I drink in the soup which stood in the draught. May they mingle with the porridge and the prunes, and bring oblivion!
—from We Shall Eat and Drink Again,
eds. Louis Golding and André L. Simon, 1944
GIACOMO CASTELVETRO ON PRUNES IN ENGLAND
Plums start to be good about this time, but since they are known everywhere I don’t need to say much about them, except that they are healthy to eat and better fresh than dried. They should only be eaten when fully ripe and during meals; not afterwards as you do in this country.
—from The Fruit, Herbs & Vegetables of Italy, 1614,
translated from the Italian by Gillian Riley
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The Americans
LOUIS PRIMA ON THE PIZZERIA
I eat Ziti Parmegon
So that I can gaze upon
Angelina,
Angelina,
The waitress at the Pizzeria.
I keep zooping Minestrone
Just to be with her alone,
Angelina,
Angelina,
The waitress at the Pizzeria.
Ti volglio bene;
Angelina, I adore you;
E volglio, bene;
Angelina, I live for you.
E un passione
You have set my heart on fire;
But Angelina,
never listens to my song.
I eat antipasto twice
Just because she is so nice,
Angelina,
Angelina,
The waitress at the Pizzeria.
If she’ll be-a
My Cara mia;
I’ll be dining at the Ritz
with the waitress from the Pizzeria.
—“Angelina, the Waitress at the Pizzeria,” lyrics
by Allan Roberts and Doris Fisher, 1944
LAROUSSE GASTRONOMIQUE ON AMERICAN FOOD
In 1938, the French gastronomic authorities went to America and decided it was not so bad. Somehow, American cuisine, seen through French eyes, looked exotic and a little different from what most Americans knew.
—M.K.
Many are the people, here in France, who think, even write, that American cooking is barbaric and that, in general, Americans do not know how to eat or drink.
This judgment seems unjust to those among us who have been there and taken the occasion to experience the American table in all its variety. It is completely different from ours, but that does not necessarily mean that it is bad.
We criticize Americans, as we do all Anglo-Saxon people, for their habit of mixing salt and sugar. We disapprove of the association of so many food substances in a single preparation. The use of sugar or sugared fruit in so many American dishes seems excessive, and with too much severity and perhaps too much irony—irony directed at our American hosts—we have judged American cooking as barbaric.
The foundation of a cuisine, whatever it be, is the quality of its products. For the most part, American products seem fine—and judging from what we have seen in American markets, we have to admit that America is considerably more blessed than France. In that country the raising of livestock has been developed to the point of perfection, for example the poultry. The gardeners and fruit growers cultivate to perfection, and thanks to the skilled care they are given, American fruits and vegetables are magnificent.
Some claim, it is true, that American fruits and vegetables are beautiful to look at but without taste. This judgment is a bit off. The Americans have more opportunity to treat themselves to good and beautiful fruit, and the lesser products are sold considerably more cheaply than here.
So the American table has perhaps given up on foods that in general are the same quality as those found here, and if the American homemaker is not exactly guided by a knowledge of cuisine, we cannot state after spending a long time in the United States that American cooking—which, we repeat, is different from ours—could be considered fundamentally bad.
Besides, in New York, and in all the major cities, the kitchens in most of the better hotels are directed by French chefs, and if in these places a large part of the menu is focused on local dishes, which is only natural, thanks to French practitioners exercising their craftsmanship, French gastronomic doctrine prevails.
Of course, it behooves us to say that America has been these last years under dry laws and had nothing available but the so-called wine furnished by bootleggers, and this has led to a diminution in the cuisine because good food can only be appreciated accompanied by good wine. But Prohibition has ended, and things have been put back in their right place, and with the help of French wine (not to mention the wine of California!), the better places in America, managed, we repeat, by our craftsmen, will bring back, and in many cases have already brought back, the brilliance of pre-Prohibition.
But if in the quality houses of America, the great restaurants and hotels, French cooking is dominant, in private homes it is a different story, and there you can find the national and local dishes. It is of these dishes that we wish to speak. In general, though very different from what we are used to—which are dishes Americans don’t like—these dishes are delicious. In the order in which they are served, we are pointing out the most typical, the most specifically American dishes.
Of the clear turtle soup, a soup that comes from England but which American gourmets like very much, we can only speak from memory. We should also mention mock turtle soup, which is very much liked. The popular soups of North America include okra consommé, chicken gumbo, oyster gumbo, soft-shell crab gumbo (Americans love soft-shell crab), chicken rice soup, beef broth, black bean soup, cream of green corn, the land turtle (a small American turtle found in swamplands near bays and gulfs), la crème aux clams, American oyster soup, clam chowder, which is a variation on the national soup, fish chowder, a fish soup very well liked in the United States, and finally, a whole series of soups of English origin, which for a very long time have conquered American taste.
Fish, both saltwater and freshwater, are an important part of the American diet. They also eat a lot of crustaceans and mollusks. The fish are generally enjoyed in the same way as in Europe, especially in the English ways.
These are the fish, crustaceans, and mollusks typical of North America: boiled halibut with special sauces for poached fishes; striped bass, an excellent fish sometimes known as American bass, which is served poached with lobster sauce or hollandaise sauce, and with a cucumber salad and parsleyed potatoes; red snapper, a fish caught in the Gulf of Mexico and Florida coast (braised and served with various
garnishes); shad roe; weakfish, grilled or baked and served with a cucumber salad; bluefish, a fish with bluish flesh served poached or grilled; pompano, a fish similar to the saint-pierre found along our coasts, and which Americans prepare in the same way; the sheep’s head, so named because its head resembles that of a sheep (it is either poached or braised); kingfish, a fish like our merlan [whiting, which is considerably different] and prepared in the same way; redfish of New Orleans, which is cooked in a bouillabaisse; butterfish, found on both the Atlantic and Gulf coasts and usually cooked meunière; whitefish, fish that grow as large as thirty pounds and is found in the Northwest; black bass, which is one of the better freshwater fish.
Americans are very partial to oysters, and in general to all shellfish. The most famous oysters in the United States are from Cotuit, Buzzards Bay, Cape Cod, and Smith Island. American gourmets like their oysters hot or cold. They prepare them in cocktails, grilled on skewers, grilled, fried, in pastry, creamed, sautéed, gratinée, or fritters.
Americans are great lovers of scallops, but also clams, both soft- and hard-shelled; hard- and soft-shell crabs; oyster crabs, those minuscule crustaceans found trapped inside the oysters caught in the American South along the Atlantic. These last with an edible shell are eaten fried. It is a luxury dish served in better restaurants. Soft-shell crabs are cooked meunière, grilled, fried, creole style, stuffed au gratin, in cream, curried. Hard-shell crabs are served the same way as in France.
Lobster fished off the coasts are excellent. It must be said that the delicious crustaceans are not prepared in America à l’américaine, a style that belongs to our own Paris cuisine, but grilled, cooked in broth, or Newburg.
Even though it doesn’t belong to the family of fish, we should mention the small land turtle, which is one of the rarities unique to American cooking. This reptile is much in demand and is sold at high prices. There are several types. The most desired one is called the diamondback because of the pattern on its shell. In Baltimore, the turtle is prepared in cream, in Philadelphia in a casserole with browned butter. What a delicious dish!
There are many dishes of meat, game, and poultry from uniquely American recipes. Butchers have excellent meat in America. All the usual dishes for meat in England and France are also done in America.
American pork is, or really American porks are, because there are many breeds, excellent. Virginia ham, made from a race called razor-backs, is especially famous. We should point out, among the fresh pork dishes in America: pig’s head. Filet of pork roasted à l’américaine, boiled corned beef, and boiled pork with a pudding of beans [pork and beans].
American poultry is of good quality. No doubt it is not on a level with poulet de Bresse, but American poultry farming produces good roasts and some excellent dishes. Among the most loved poultry dishes in the United States are boiled turkey; wild roasted turkey; Turkey with oyster stuffing; turkey stuffed with clams; capons; American-style chicken; American-style goose; Rhode Island duckling; and chicken pâté.
Various game, both birds and mammals, are prepared as in England and France. The woodcock, similar to a European becasse but with a smaller tail, is very highly thought of. Grouses are also well liked in America. There are several types: the ruffed grouse, the heath grouse, the sage grouse, the prairie chicken. All these birds are roasted and served with a bread-crumb sauce and red currant jelly.
Wild ducks are plentiful in America and the meat is delicious. The most famous is the canvasback: It is roasted and stuffed inside with a sort of celery that is removed just before serving. It is accompanied by a celery salad, sometimes with pineapple, and hominy croquettes, and red currant jelly.
Vegetables in the United States are much more interesting than supposed by French people who think Americans only eat vegetables cooked in salt water, drained, and served with fresh butter.
The ways of eating vegetables in this country are many and varied. To just mention the principal ones used in household cooking: hash-brown potatoes; creamed lima beans; sweet corn with butter, creamed, or au gratin; white corn fritters; corn croquettes; cole slaw; sauteed tomatoes; American-style zucchini; American-style red beets; parsnips; potatoes au gratin, grilled, fried; bananas in butter; American-style okra.
The Americans are also great salad enthusiasts. The salads, which they often dress with cream, sometimes have very strange composition. Thus you find celery salad with pineapple, grapefruit, and avocado (the avocado is a tropical fruit also known under the name beurre végétal); melon, white cabbage, etc.
There are very many both hot and cold appetizers and pastries of purely American origin. In addition to these native preparations some are imported from England, notably all the puddings and cakes of the British repertoire. Among the best-loved American sweets we list: fig pudding; bread pudding; pancakes, a sort of crepe that is eaten topped with maple syrup; corn griddle cake; American waffles; crullers; squash and potato puddings; tipsy cake; nut cake; sponge cake (the special thing about this cake, which is always eaten with a family, is that it is not cut with a knife but with a cake cutter): cupcakes; ginger cakes; New York cookies [les cookies New-Yorkais]; coconut macaroons, etc.
—from Larousse Gastronomique, 1938,
translated from the French by Mark Kurlansky
LOUIS DIAT’S OYSTER CRABS
I was curious about Larousse’s assertion in 1938 that Americans like fried oyster crabs, the tiny crustaceans occasionally found in an oyster. The only American use I had ever heard of for these tiny crabs was in a New Orleans soup. But then I remembered that to Larousse, the bastion of American cuisine were the French chefs at the leading hotels. So I looked at the cooking of Louis Diat, New York’s most celebrated chef of the period, a Frenchman at New York’s Ritz-Carlton. Voilà.
—M.K.
Whitebait and Oyster Crabs
These are in season with oysters. In the East, whitebaits come from Long Island. At times I have received some so fresh that when I immersed them in water they were revived.
It is best to fry them. Dip in milk and flour and fry in deep hot fat or oil for 2 or 3 minutes.
Fry oyster crabs with the whitebaits and serve with lemon and Tartar Sauce.
Oyster crabs are also served with Newburgh Sauce or Cream Sauce or Curry Sauce. Poach in a little butter and a glass of sherry.
—from Cooking à la Ritz, 1941
ANGELO PELLEGRINI ON THE ABUNDANCE OF AMERICA
Fed on this meager and monotonous fare, hungry for white bread, coffee, and sugar, flesh and fowl, I came to America. Against the background of pilchards and polenta, what I found here, in this land of refugees from hunger and oppression, remains for me a dramatic and ever fascinating story. I found, first of all, the meaning, the consumable, edible meaning, of a simple word, lost in the dictionary among thousands of others—the meaning of the word abundance. I had known scarcity, had lived on intimate terms with its agonizing reality; and the discovery of its opposite, its annihilator, was an experience so maddening with joy, so awful and bewildering, that I am not yet fully recovered from the initial shock. Give man bread, woolens against the cold, labor that he enjoys, and you may open wide the doors to the futile agitator of riots and revolutions. While it may be no longer true that an army marches on its stomach, it is everlastingly true that a social order endures so long as the pantries of its citizens are stocked with good food. Thus food, bread and meat in sinful profusion, was my first discovery; and after that I came to know what I can best describe as the naturalization of Italian cuisine.
When I arrived in America, I recalled and immediately understood a saying I had frequently heard in Italy. When one had met with a bit of good fortune, such as an unusual yield from the vine or perhaps a meager inheritance, his friends would say to him, “Eh, l’hai trovata l’America!” Ha, you have found your America. This expression, in various dialectical versions, is current among Italian immigrants in America even today.
I was not immediately impressed by the skyscrapers, th
e automobiles, and the roaring trains of the metropolitan centers along the eastern seaboard. The only emotion they stirred within me was fear—fear of being lost, engulfed, annihilated. What was immediately impressive were the food stalls; the huge displays of pastries and confections, the mountains of fish, flesh, and fowl; the crowded cafés, where the aristocrat—or so he seemed—sat beside the drayman in overalls, gulping coffee drawn from huge urns and soberly eating ham and eggs; eating such fare without any visible display of joy, as if in obedience to some distasteful duty—as if it were yesterday’s polenta! Ham and eggs! (Come to your senses, ye brave Americans, and spare your noble dish the corrupting catsup! Amend your constitution—you did it once against misguided gourmets—that you may enjoin forever such culinary adultery.) Ham and eggs with fried potatoes, stacks of buttered toast and coffee—that was my first acquaintance with American food. It remains to this day my favorite American dish. I would pay dearly for a gulp-to-gulp moving picture of myself, seated in a New York restaurant, a hungry immigrant urchin to the core, trying to counterfeit nonchalance as I wolfed my culinary cares away. And as I remembered the boot of earth across the water, where eggs had been too precious to be served with any regularity, and where coffee had been hoarded against the bellyache—its curative value somehow mysteriously related to its scarcity—I said to myself, “L’America é buona.” America is good.