by James Steen
The Petrossian brothers studied at Moscow University, one to become a lawyer; the other an architect. Their next stop was France, emigrating after the Armenian holocaust in 1915. This was a prosperous era; les années folles to the Parisians.
What followed is one of the great fables of entrepreneurialism in 20th century gastronomy. Glancing around, the brothers could see that, although they had left Russia, they were still surrounded by many things Russian. The Parisians had fallen in love, as is the way in that city, with the intriguing cultures of the Petrossians’ homeland. Exiled Russian princes were the toast of the town. Russian writers, poets and artists were on the A-list of every giddy, champagned soirée. The arts, the ballet, the choreography of Diaghilev, and the music of Igor Stravinsky; all of it was adored or cheerfully being discovered by the French elite.
The Petrossian brothers noticed, however, that there was no caviar. The delicacy was missing from the lives of their expatriates, and the high society of Paris was mostly unaware of the dark, glistening roe.
The brothers knew the product from their Russian origins (Armenia was part of the Russian Empire). They had no contacts within the new Soviet government to help them arrange an import deal, but they contacted the Russian Ministry of Foreign Trade and were soon told to take cash to the Paris embassy. Hopeful that the Ministry would keep its word, Melkoum and Mouchegh raised the cash and delivered it in two suitcases. Some weeks later the caviar began to arrive.
In 1920, the brothers opened a kiosk to sell their wares. They had realised the value of introducing caviar, and they worked tirelessly to promote and build the brand, using their name on the tins as the trademark, adorned with the now famous red-sailed ship as a logo.
They also turned to César Ritz, the impresario of the European hotel trade, and creator of the Ritz in London. Initially, he was reluctant, believing that it would not sell, and he told them so. (How could he have foreseen then that today, apart from Russia, France is the biggest consumer of caviar?)
Eventually, when caviar went onto the menu at Ritz’s prestigious establishment at the Place Vendôme the delicacy caught on quickly. At the 1929 World Exposition, which was held in Paris, the Petrossians had an audience of journalists from around the world. The subsequent positive write-ups helped to establish the reputation of caviar as a luxury item. The company also began to offer other speciality products, such as smoked salmon and foie gras. With business booming, the Petrossians negotiated, through the Soviet Ministry of Fisheries, the exclusive right to import caviar into France, as well as Switzerland, the United States and Canada.
Decades later, the brothers are no longer with us. Yet the Petrossian family continues to oversee the caviar empire (there are a dozen boutiques across the globe). And in 1998, Armen Petrossian became the first French producer to sell farmed caviar (there are about a hundred sturgeon farms in the world). His mother Maïloff was the daughter of one of the five families who had been given fishing rights by the Tsar, and in a sweetly romantic twist she had married Mouchegh Petrossian in 1934.
In about 1935 the Russians established a method of producing sturgeons from wild fertilized roe, and they were the first to release large amounts of the fingerlings into the sea. Most of the world’s sturgeon farms were created after 1975, to re-stock the natural habitat. The cost of producing caviar from farmed sturgeon seemed economically impossible, but in 1997 the protection of sturgeon by the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species created restrictions on the catch. The price of caviar started to jump and saw the beginnings of caviar production from farmed sturgeon.
A year later the world-wide production of farmed caviar was only 500 kilograms. Today it is around 300 tons.
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There is also a Petrossian warehouse in London, A Touch of Caviar Ltd. Over a tasting of the delicacy, Isabelle Augier, the UK Director, told me that while today’s caviar is farmed, the process remains much the same as it has always been.
Of course there are modern improvements. Nowadays, the sturgeon can be scanned by ultrasound to establish the maturity of the roe. When it is time to take the eggs, the fish needs to be despatched in order to acquire the roe. A caesarean can be performed, but afterwards the roe will never be of the same quality.
‘The sturgeon’s eggs represent more than 10 per cent of the weight of the fish,’ says Isabelle. So beluga – the largest species of sturgeon, it can weigh about 100 kilograms and produces the most expensive roe – can produce ten kilograms of caviar. The roe goes from the farm to the shop, and there the process begins. (Italy and China, incidentally, compete to be the largest producers of farmed sturgeon roe.)
‘First,’ says Isabelle, ‘the eggs are put in a sieve and very carefully washed in water. Next, salt is added by hand. Of the total weight, between 2.8 and 3 per cent is salt. The salt brings flavour and is a preservative. Then the salted eggs are packed in what is known as an “original tin”. Next, the eggs are gently pressed to release the air. At this point, no more air will be able to get to the caviar. The oil of the eggs, however, can escape through the bottom of the tin, which is what we want to happen. Little by little the residue is expelled. Every so often the caviar is pressed again, and the tin is turned.’
Once in the tin, the maturing starts. ‘If you have roe and salt and eat it straight way it will not have the beautiful taste of caviar,’ she says.
The eggs from different sturgeon are never mixed. ‘Every fish will give a different taste or different sized egg.’ The tins are stored at a temperature of -2˚C to 0˚C.
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Every Petrossian caviar house has a ‘caviarlogue’ (a trademarked name). He or she is a sort of caviar master, blessed with an exceptional palate and acute senses, a bit like the tasters of vineyards, distilleries, breweries and chocolatiers. His or her job is to monitor the quality of the caviar, and know when it is just right to sell.
‘He knocks the tins to check there is no air inside,’ says Isabelle. ‘He can understand the maturity of the caviar. He will open the tins to check. He will smell it, look at the colour, the shine. He will smell it and, of course, he will taste it. He is the one who will decide if the caviar is ready to be sold, if it has reached the perfect level of maturity or should it be left, let’s say, for another three months.’
Some caviar waits for eighteen months before going on sale, when it is at its best and ready to be eaten. It is the caviarlogue’s responsibility to decide the classifications and grades into which each original tin of caviar falls: should it be sold as Royal, Imperial or Special Reserve?
Royal has medium to small sized eggs, firm to melting, with sea flavour notes, and a long and fishy taste in the mouth. Imperial has large to medium sized roe, which are firm, light to dark colour, and subtle aromatic flavours. The Special Reserve is exceedingly rare caviar, selected for its large size roes, and it is aromatic and perfectly balanced. So, for instance, should you have your credit card handy, you might like to buy Ossetra Special Reserve, or maybe Beluga Imperial.
‘The country it comes from is not important,’ says Isabelle. ‘What is important is the species of sturgeon.’ The wild species are beluga, ossetra (or oscietra) and sevruga. Farmed sturgeon varieties include baerii and transmontanus. Caviar is subjective – a matter of personal taste. Beluga comes at the highest price because the sturgeon takes about eighteen years to produce eggs, and the eggs are large. Yet the less expensive ossetra, richly buttery, is reckoned to be the connoisseur’s caviar.
So as not to break the eggs, caviar should be spooned carefully onto lightly toasted bread or blinis, or directly into the mouth, preferably using that mother of pearl spoon. Place a dollop on the tongue and press against the palate to experience a powerful burst of briny flavours. Some caviar is noticeably acidic, pleasantly so. La longueur en bouche, or the ‘length’ on the palate, signifies good quality caviar: after tasting, the flavours continue to develop in the mouth, in a similar way to a fantastic wine or chocolate.
Keep a c
lean palate in between mouthfuls; drinking coffee or tea, or smoking while tasting is not recommended. Vodka, brut champagne or a very dry white wine are all acceptable alcoholic companions. Do not eat caviar with eggs or pickles. Add lemon juice if you like, but only at your palate’s peril.
Is it time for the bill? The Alba white truffle, to put things in perspective, is an Italian delicacy which sells for about £2,000 per kilo. But that is small change when compared with the price of caviar. In 2016 Harrods charged the following prices for a small tin containing one serving – 30 grams (1.06 ounces) – of caviar: Beluga Imperial, £370; Ossetra Imperial, £110; Baïka Royal, £80; Daurenki Royal, £70.
RAMEN
A nutritious, umami-rich Japanese soup (with ancient roots in China) comprising noodles in a broth that is usually made with pork or chicken stock.
Several thousand years ago in the Qinghai province of northern China there was a settlement called Lajia.
It was a time when water was given God-like reverence. Today we take the availability of water for granted, but then it was the greatest commodity available. Water sustains life, of course, and communities established themselves around rivers, springs, lakes and beside the sea. A source of water was a bit like a church: people gathered close to it. Lajia was one such community, nestling near the banks of the Yellow River. The river kept the inhabitants of Lajia alive but eventually, in about 2,000 BC it would bring catastrophe to the settlement.
From modern scientific studies it seems that one day there was an earthquake and this was shortly followed by the flooding of the river. The town’s inhabitants tried to escape a watery fate, but they were trapped and death was instant. The town was buried, much like the disaster of Pompeii in AD 79, when the ancient Roman town was immersed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Indeed, Lajia has become known as ‘The Pompeii of the East’.
Lajia and its people were unknown, and would have remained so, were it not for an excavation that started at the turn of this century – some four thousand years after the town was buried. Slowly and carefully, archaeologists and scientists started to unearth the settlement and piece together what it looked like, how it existed and thrived and, of course, how it was destroyed. Archaeologists came across skeletons that were in unusual postures, showing that the inhabitants had died as they tried to flee the flood. From the excavation site, there were touching, haunting photographs of the skeletal remains, one of a mother embracing her child.
Yet Lajia also contained one great secret, which, along with the rest of the town, had been preserved by burial for four thousand years. There among the ruins was an upturned earthenware bowl, which when lifted, revealed a mass of yellow strands, each about 50 centimetres long. The strands were identified as noodles, and they were the oldest ones ever to be discovered. They were evidence that noodles were ‘invented’ by the Chinese.
Radiocarbon dating of the food confirmed that it was about 4,000 years old. The noodles had been made with grains from millet grass, unlike modern-day noodles, which are made with wheat flour. Scientists examined the shape and patterning of starch grains and seed-husk phytoliths in the bowl, and compared them with modern crops. Their analysis pointed to the use of foxtail millet and broomcorn millet.
‘Prior to the discovery of noodles at Lajia,’ said Professor Houyuan Lu of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics at Beijing’s Chinese Academy of Sciences, ‘the earliest written record of noodles is traced to a book written during the East Han Dynasty sometime between AD 25 and 220, although it remained a subject of debate whether the Chinese, the Italians, or the Arabs invented it first.’
The discovery goes a long way to settling the old argument: who created noodles? The ancient food at Lajia resembled the la mian noodles of today. These are made from a dough of flour and water (sometimes a little salt is added). Then, always by hand, the dough is pounded, pushed, pulled, folded, twisted and stretched – and dusted with flour and thumped a few times. Once the dough is perfectly thin, the noodles are pulled from it. ‘La mian’ means pull noodle. The 4,000-year-old noodles would have been made with millet grain (rather than wheat) and water from the Yellow River (or one of its tributaries).
Slow though it may be, we are heading towards Japanese ramen, I promise.
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In the 8th century BC the Chinese discovered a new form of preservation. They crushed the bones and entrails of shellfish, or fish or game, placed them in earthenware pots and poured in rice wine. Perhaps a little salt was added. There the mixture stayed for a few months, fermentation taking place.
Several hundred years later they discovered that the same fermentation process could be used with soy beans. This they called jiang. They also produced a sauce from the process. Jiangyou is, literally, the sauce pressed from jiang: known in the West as soy, or soya, sauce, the world’s first-ever condiment.
Jiang made its way to Japan in the 6th or 7th century AD. Japan already had hisio, a pickled sauce. But now they had jiang, they were on their way to making their very own miso, created from a two-stage fermentation process.
First, steamed grains – brown rice, soy beans or barley – are introduced to a mould, aspergillus oryzae, which has been cultivated, usually from rice plants. After a couple of days, the result is what is known as koji and it has the enzymes necessary for the next stage. The koji is mixed with brine – salt and water – and soy beans which have been cooked. This mixture is put into a pot or vat, the lid goes on, and it is left for six to eighteen months.
When the lid comes off, the miso is done: a dark paste which has a meaty taste. This can be added to soups, broths, sauces. It could be added to ramen, when ramen was invented. As with its cousin soy sauce, miso contains umami – the taste, or rather the sensation that instantly lifts our spirits and makes us say: ‘Wow!’
La mian also made its way to Japan, but not until the early 1900s, and during the reign of Emperor Meiji. This was an exciting period of innovation in Japan, as feudal society faded away and the country aimed to leave behind its Asian neighbours and catch up with the Western world. An industrial revolution took place, and by the end of World War I the nation was a mighty economic force.
Its food, too, was developing rapidly. There were Chinese restaurants in Japan, and street vendors selling Chinese food. Soon the noodles – inspired by la mian and known as ramen – were introduced to broth or soup. This dish was called shina soba (Chinese noodles) but miso had yet to feature in it.
A few hundred tonnes of miso were also being sold annually in America, but that ended abruptly following the outbreak of the Second World War. President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which permitted the internment of 120,000 west-coast Japanese-Americans. All of the miso shops on the west coast of the United States were forcibly shut down. Their owners and staff, along with other Japanese-Americans, were sent to detention camps.
After the war, the Japanese who had lived in China returned to their homeland, where many of them opened shops selling ramen, and by the 1950s shina soba was a phrase of the past.
The ramen revolution was led by Kazuo Yamagishi, who in 1954 opened his little restaurant, Higashi-Ikebukuro Taishôken. He devised the tsukemen (or mori soba) dish: cold noodles served in one bowl, hot broth or soup in the other. You lift some noodles with your chopsticks, swish the noodles around in the soup, and eat. Yamagishi was an interesting eccentric, his head frequently wrapped in a white towel. He died in 2015, at the age of 80, by which time more than 100 of his protégés had gone on to open their own restaurants.
The quality of ramen depends heavily on the pork or chicken stock – it should be exceptional. Ramen is best made in a wok and can be quickly prepared as follows:
First, finely sliced pork or chicken is stir-fried in an extremely hot wok. Finely sliced vegetables – pak choi, lettuce, onion, garlic, lemongrass, you name it – are tossed in, stirred and fried rapidly on the high heat.
The stock, hot, is poured in.
Next, add the noodles. Rame
n noodles (which are wheat based, with no egg) are fantastic. Udon or soba noodles will also do the trick. Ladle the soup, with the noodles, into bowls.
Add miso, according to your taste. Garnish with a slice of pork or chicken, and perhaps a slice of hard-boiled egg.
Or follow Yamagashi’s route, serving the chilled noodles and soup in separate bowls. Heaven, especially with a bottle of saké.
SUSHI
Japanese ‘fingers’ of compacted, vinegared rice with finely-sliced fresh, raw shellfish and fish.
About 1,500 years ago, the fishermen of South-east Asia came up with an intelligent and successful way of preserving their catch from the sea, lakes and rivers. They stored the fish in rice, packed tightly in a wooden box and weighted down with a stone. Over the period of a few weeks, the rice fermented and the fish was pickled. The rice would be tossed away, but the pickled fish was there to see the people through possible famine. Sushi was the name given to the rice, or rather its sour taste.
In the 7th century AD, the technique had spread to Japan, and Lake Biwa, where carp was placed between layers of salted rice. After several months, the rice was removed and the fish was left to cure. This technique was known as narezushi. It was not until the mid-1600s that Dr Matsumoto Yoshici, a court physician, made an interesting discovery: he added rice vinegar in the preparation, which shortened the fermentation process and, quite simply, made the rice taste nice.
But it was a dramatic development involving a street vendor in the 1820s which led to a sushi revolution. Yohei Hanaya sold food to the crowds that came to watch sumo wrestling in Ryogoku, a district of Tokyo. Clearly an enterprising soul, Hanaya devised an exciting type of finger food: finely-sliced raw fish placed on top of compact, vinegared rice, tied together with a strip of seaweed (kori). Sometimes horseradish-like wasabi was added. This finger food is nigirizushi, known more commonly as sushi.