by James Steen
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If you do like to eat ants, you may want to try ant eggs, a topic I covered in an earlier book, The Kitchen Magpie. In Thailand, red ant eggs are a versatile and nutritious food whether eaten on their own or as an ingredient in recipes like Yam Kai Mot Daeng (a salad), Kaeng Kai Mot Daeng (a soup) or Kai Jiow Kai Mot (an omelette). Then there is Kai Mot Daeng Op, in which lightly salted ant eggs are wrapped in banana leaves before the bundle is roasted.
In Mexico you can sate your appetite with escamoles. These are the larvae of ants of the genus Liometopum, harvested from the roots of the country’s agave or maguey plants (from which tequila and mescal are made, respectively). In some forms of Mexican cuisine, escamoles are a delicacy, sometimes referred to as ‘insect caviar’. They have a cottage cheese-like consistency and taste buttery, yet slightly nutty (those last two terms can also be used to describe caviar). Sometimes ant eggs are thrown in to escamoles, just for that extra crunch.
SMØRREBRØD
A towering open sandwich with a multitude of toppings, many of them pickled or smoked; eaten in Denmark with a chilled shot (or three) of aquavit.
First, a few words about the sandwich in general; two pieces of bread, with a filling in between. The Oxford English Dictionary states that the bread should be buttered, although surely butter is an option and not always necessary. A spread such as mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup or HP sauce often eliminates the need for butter. A bacon sarnie does not require butter. Likewise, Larousse Gastronomique – the French chef’s bible – also ascribes to the buttered bread theory … but then goes on to list the ‘foie gras sandwich’, which does not have butter as an ingredient.
The sandwich takes its name from John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718–1792) and First Lord of the Admiralty. He was also a keen gambler and, so the story goes, during a 24-hour cards session he asked his valet to bring him some roast beef and bread. ‘Put the beef between two slices,’ he instructed. This, he reasoned, would enable him to eat and continue with the game but would also prevent the cards becoming greasy. (Note: no mention of butter.) His chums marvelled at this spectacularly useful creation. From that moment on, the cards room echoed with cries of: ‘I’ll have what Sandwich is having.’ Soon it entered the diet of the posh and wealthy, and became dainty finger food.
Of course, Sandwich did not really ‘invent’ the sandwich, as is commonly suggested. Think of the paysannes of France, setting off for a day in the fields. They took with them a bottle of wine, a hunk of crusty bread and a large slice of cheese. Inevitably, the cheese worked its way between the bread. Similarly, Britain’s shepherds are likely to have eaten cold meat wrapped in a couple of slices of bread, with an apple or pear for additional sustenance. The Encyclopaedia of Food and Culture says of Sandwich: ‘… During his excursions in the Eastern Mediterranean, he saw grilled pita breads and small canapés and sandwiches served by the Greeks and Turks during their mezes, and copied the concept for its obvious convenience’.
The first known mention of the sandwich comes courtesy of Edward Gibbon, the Member of Parliament, historian and author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In his journal, snuff-sniffing Gibbon gives the ‘sandwich’ its debut in print when he records events of 24 November 1762:
I dined at the Cocoa Tree … That respectable body, of which I have the honour of being a member, affords every evening a sight truly English. Twenty or thirty, perhaps, of the first men in the kingdom, in point of fortune and fashion, supping at tables, covered with a little napkin, in the middle of a coffee-room, upon a bit of cold meat, or a sandwich, and drinking a glass of punch.
The sandwich does not seem to feature in a cookery book until 1787, when Charlotte Mason gives it just a nod in The Lady’s Assistant for Regulating and Supplying the Table. ‘Put some very thin slices of beef between thin slices of bread and butter; cut the ends off neatly, lay them in a dish. Veal and ham cut thin may be served in the same manner.’
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Digressing briefly, the preceding entries in Mason’s 18th century book are for ‘Welch’ rabbit, Scotch rabbit and English rabbit. Of Scotch rabbit, she instructs: ‘Toast a slice of bread of a fine white brown on both sides, butter it; toast a slice of cheese on both sides and put it on the bread.’ The ‘Welch’ rabbit is made in the same way and then ‘… with a hot salamander, brown it and rub some mustard over it’.
English rabbit, meanwhile, was a boozy affair:
Cut a slice of bread, toast it, and soak it in red wine, put it before the fire; cut some cheese in very thin slices and rub some butter over the bottom of a plate, lay some cheese upon it and pour in two or three spoonfuls of white wine, and a little mustard; cover it with another plate and set it on a chafing-dish of coals two or three minutes, then stir it until it is well mixed; when it is enough lay it upon the bread and brown it with a salamander.
Enjoy!
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In order to confuse the compilers of the OED and Larousse, some sandwiches are still called sandwiches even though they require only one slice of bread, as opposed to two.
This type of sandwich is the ‘open sandwich’ or ‘open-faced sandwich’. The rabbit – be it English, Scottish or Welsh – is not thought of as an open sandwich for some reason. Smørrebrød, however, is. The word stems from smør og brød, meaning butter and bread; gastronomy’s great understatement of description. Yes, it has butter and bread – rye, pumpernickel, sourdough, white, you name it – as its ingredients, but they are merely the base of the fantastic feast that is piled upon them.
As with a sandwich filling, the smørrebrød can have numerous ingredients, from savoury to sweet. Often it will include smoked fish or meat, and pickled ingredients are frequently used. Cold roasted meats such as pork and beef are popular, as is beef tartare (raw beef, finely chopped).
Onto the buttered bread goes, for instance, smoked salmon, and then prawns, and then sliced hard-boiled egg, and then roe; perhaps a grating or two of horseradish, as well as a slice of lemon and a sprig of dill to garnish. Or maybe you would prefer succulent slices of rare roast beef with fried onions and pickled radishes and a handful of fresh cress. Or sliced potatoes with onion, sliced apple and a couple of sprigs of thyme. Or, for breakfast, a smørrebrød of bilberry jam with whipped cream.
Traditionally this open-sandwich is eaten with a knife and fork, and butter is not essential. But even if that is the case, the dish is still called smørrebrød and not brød. Butter can be replaced by any other fat, and meat dripping is usually the replacement.
The smørrebrød precedes the Earl of Sandwich’s sandwich by a few centuries and the bread was probably used as the plate – a pile of ingredients were placed on top, and their juices would be soaked up by the bread beneath. Then the bread, rich in the flavours it had absorbed, was eaten (or not, if you were affluent).
Just as the paysannes of France and the shepherds of Britain left home with their bread and cheese or cold meats, the farm labourers of 17th century Denmark took bread and ‘toppings’ into the fields so that they had a meal later in the day. This original, but unnamed smørrebrød, was most likely washed down then as it often is today, with Danish beer and a shot of aquavit. In fact, the smørrebrød was being eaten in Denmark before Denmark was even producing butter. The first-known mention appears in the 18th century works of Ludwig Holberg, Baron of Holberg, the Norwegian-born essayist and playwright who spent much of his life in Copenhagen. He does not describe the filling.
At the officers’ club in Copenhagen in the 1880s, head waiter Emil Bjorn came up with a list of smørrebrød dishes and handed this menu – or smørrebrødssedel – to the officers. They could order and then play cards while eating their open sandwiches. Doubtless, the cards became greasy in a way that would have bothered the Earl of Sandwich. But from this clever move by Bjorn, a new custom was born. These sorts of menus are now commonplace in Danish restaurants.
PHO
A fragrant soup which exemplifies purity of tas
te. Vietnamese with French influence, the original is made with a stock from beef bones and contains rice noodles.
‘Pho is so elemental to Vietnamese Chinese culture that people talk about it in terms of romantic relationships,’ writes Andrea Nguyen in The Pho Cookbook. ‘Rice is the dutiful wife you can rely on, we say. Pho is the flirty mistress you slip away to visit.’
It is pronounced fah – start to say ‘fun’, which is what the pho is, but stop short of the ‘n’ sound. Although it is certainly part of the country’s culture, it is a comparatively new dish, little more than a century old. It is said that its journey (pho is now popular all around the world) started out in Nam Định, not far from Hanoi, in the North of Vietnam. In the early 1900s, Hanoi was the stopping place for travellers and merchants, and was home to many French men and women. The French had occupied Vietnam since the 1880s (and would remain until 1954), bringing their food customs and cooking techniques. There were also plenty of visitors from the nearby provinces of China. Inevitably, this led to culinary influences, some from the Chinese; others from the French.
The Vietnamese people used cows for work but did not really eat the cattle until they had grown old and were useless. The French, on the other hand, were committed and renowned consumers of beef. Something had to give. So inevitably, the cows were slaughtered. The French took the best cuts, and the remaining bones were retained by the butchers who, in turn, sold them at a cheap rate to the locals. The Vietnamese knew how to make broth, and they applied their skills to the beef bones and carcasses.
They simmered the bones gently for hours and when they had finished they were left with the intensely flavoursome base for the soup that would be called pho. Star anise, chilli, ginger, shallots and coriander were also incorporated. Rice noodles were added, too. Often the dish would have, perhaps, a thin slice of beef, cooked rare in the hot soup. They needed a name for the dish. Pho is believed to be a corruption of feu, the French for fire. And while the French make their beloved pot-au-feu – beef with vegetables and stock – in one big pot, so the pho was made in a cauldron: a pot of pho, if you like. It is a one-pot meal.
The pho, cheap to make, became street food sold by vendors in Hanoi. Across his shoulders the pho vendor would carry a pole: at one end was the pot of pho; at the other end hung a box containing noodles and spices.
This pho of the North became known as pho bac, and is the first pho. In 1954, when Vietnam was divided, people fled the communist rule of the North and headed south. They took with them their pho recipes and cauldrons. Here in the South, the pho evolved to become pho nam – the pho of the South. Hoisin sauce and fish sauce were added. Beef became merely an option; for the pho nam, chicken could be used instead of cow.
In 1975, at the end of the Vietnam War, refugees fled the country, resettling elsewhere and spreading the word of pho. Once again, it developed: in restaurants around the world, pho is now a dish of extensive variety, and shellfish and pork have joined the long list of possible ingredients.
CAVIAR
The world’s most expensive delicacy, originating in the Caspian Sea. The salt-cured roe of the mighty sturgeon is best eaten on spoons made of mother of pearl, with a shot of vodka within easy reach.
This story begins in AD 1240 when Batu Khan (grandson of Ghengis) had finished his annihilation of Moscow, much of central Russia, and Kiev.
With his Mongol warrior’s hunger, and a sizeable thirst to quench, Batu went with his wife to Uglich, and to the Resurrection Monastery. There the monks prepared to feed their guests. A feast was brought from the kitchens, one dish after another. There was sturgeon, both roasted at the fire and in a piping-hot soup, and plenty of other dishes, with and without sturgeon as their main ingredient.
Then came the final dish. For this one, apples had been gathered from the trees of the monastery’s garden before being stewed. The compote was served with something unknown to the warrior: the salt-cured roe of sturgeon – caviar – was on top of the apple stew. His wife Yildiz did not enjoy the taste, but Batu was overwhelmed by the experience, his first mouthfuls of caviar.
This is the earliest reference to caviar being eaten in Russia, although where and when in the world it was first eaten does not appear in the chronicles of food history. The Greeks, Turkish, Romans and Chinese have all claimed to be the ones who were the first to realise that the eggs taste better than the fish.
The history books can be misleading. They do refer to ‘caviar’ but caviar back then was not as it is today. Instead, the product was treated as an ingredient, and in one recipe the eggs were used in the same way as the roe of mullet, for instance, to create bottarga (or poutargue), of which the Greeks were the pioneers. The roe was taken from the fish immediately after the catch, placed on granite rocks and covered with salt. The elements did the rest: the roe was left to dry in the sun and wind. The eggs were dried, pressed or cooked but never raw salted as they are today.
While the sturgeon was ‘royal food’, its roe was merely a by-product which was cooked, dried, fried, salted and pressed. It was more of a condiment; an addition to a meal rather than being its very own dish, as it is in the 21st century.
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In the 1500s caviar had reached Western Europe. The French writer François Rabelais mentioned it in Pantagruel, and also described it as the choicest item in what we would now call hors d’oeuvres. And in Tudor Britain, William Shakespeare referred to it in Hamlet: ‘For the play, I remember, pleased not the million, ‘twas caviary to the general …’
Caviar was not, as Shakespeare and Yildiz Khan would have agreed, to everyone’s taste. It was, however, a food that pleased royalty, the elite, and it was rare. Caviar had delicacy status.
In the 1800s it became occasionally talked about in wider, less well-off circles. For instance, in 1837, during the reign of William IV, James Jennings finds room for ‘caviare’ (it had yet to lose the ‘e’ of the French spelling) in Two Thousand Five Hundred Practical Recipes in Family Cookery.
As you may have gathered from the title, this is an excellent but monumental tome competing to be the heftiest cookbook ever published. Jennings almost runs out of Roman numerals in his Introduction. The subtitle reads: ‘In which the whole art of preparing food is simplified and explained, in accordance to the best knowledge of the age, and most conducive to the health and happiness of our species, with an introduction on the duties of cooks and other servants …’
Of caviar he writes: ‘The roe of the sturgeon is usually taken out, put upon a table, beaten flat and sprinkled with salt; it is then dried in the air and afterwards in the ovens; it should be of a reddish brown colour and very dry; this is called caviare and eaten with salt and vinegar.’
Caviar should not be eaten with salt and vinegar. But Jennings was not the only one to promote this as a food which required additions, rather than one that is at its best when eaten on its own. Since the early 1900s, the tradition has been to eat it from a spoon of mother of pearl, or, nowadays, even a plastic spoon. (A silver or stainless steel spoon might taint the roe with a metallic taste.)
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In British cookery books of this time, sturgeon recipes were more common than references to caviar.
With her characteristic high-spirits, Elizabeth Raffald gave this sturgeon recipe to her readers in The Experienced English Housekeeper, published in 1769. ‘Take what size of a sturgeon you think proper, and wash it clean. Lay it all night in salt and water. The next morning take it out, rub it well with Allegar and let it lie in it for two hours …’ Allegar was a type of sour ale, often used in pickling and the making of catchup (now ketchup).
Raffald also has a recipe for pickling sturgeon in Ale Allegar. Once pickled, the sturgeon is poached in a fish kettle, before the skin is removed and the flesh receives a dusting of flour. Then it is browned in butter and served with a sauce of cream and lemon, and garnished with ‘crisp parsley and red pickles’. (On the subject of parsley, quickly, it was used by the Romans, and for centuries it was
believed that crowns of parsley were placed on winners’ heads at the Isthmian Games. Then it was discovered that the translation was incorrect, and it was wild celery which made the crowns.)
Raffald, and later Jennings, were seemingly unaware that sturgeon was, and is a royal fish. Like whale, it is the property of the English monarch. When Raffald was writing her book, Sir William Blackstone was feverishly producing four volumes entitled The Commentaries on the Laws of England, which listed the common laws of the land. The law concerning royal fish had been in place since the 14th century. What’s more, in the case of the whale, the king owns the head, and the queen owns the tail. You can catch a sturgeon – and they are to be found in British waters – but the minute you lift it from the water it becomes the property of the monarch. So if you fear the legal repercussions, do not pickle sturgeon at home. This law also reflects the value of sturgeon but notice that caviar is not mentioned because, as with other fish roe, it was often cooked with the fish and had yet to be considered a delicacy.
Indeed, caviar only started to become well known in Russia after 1820 (that was also when the traditional ‘original tin’ (two kilograms) was created, and the word ‘malossol’ came into use. This differentiated between the caviar of the day which was pressed and salted heavily, and the one that is less salted, i.e., the malossol.
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Home for Melkoum and Mouchegh Petrossian was on the Russian side of the Caspian Sea. They had been born in the late 19th century, but on the Iranian side of the sea. At that time the Caspian Sea was divided into five zones, including Iranian waters, and each zone was exploited by one of five Russian families who had been awarded fishing rights by the Tsar.