Eating Out

Eating Out

    Our home dinner the other night was another adventure in eating, a slow-cooked prime rib accompanied with twice-baked potatoes and roasted vegetables.  And while fancy (and more than satiating our guests), it was quite different from the twice-baked potato served at Le Cirque which was made by baking, "...on a bed of salt, then scoop out the inside and mash it with butter, cream, and a heaping spoonful of canned black truffles...stuff the filling back into the potato skin, bake it again, and then place a seared piece of foie gras on top.  It cost $90."  That recipe's description came from Gail Simmons' book, Talking With My Mouth Full.  It also came from a restaurant my wife and I will likely never see; we simply don't eat like that.

    Forward to today and we're back from taking our moms out to a buffet, a Sunday brunch with a variety of food choices and all at a place that we would likely all consider not at all fancy (during the week, a senior special here can fill your belly for under $8).  We felt that it would make our moms happy just to get out.  But for our moms, the higher prices of the weekend brunch just ruined their meal (even though we had treated them).  So expensive, one said; there's no need to pay those prices, said another.  It all seemed to reflect the differences in so many of us, differences that are sometimes generational, and sometimes simply due to one's upbringing.  Just as my wife and I would be shocked to see a $90 half-potato on our plate (even if we were treated), so our moms were aghast as seeing the prices double simply because of the weekend menu offering a steak.

    For some, the menu will never change; the same order will be placed time after time no matter where they are, content with the steak and potatoes or the chicken salad sandwich.  Yet for others, the variety of the menu is the reason to go out, a good excuse to try something different, the special or the seasonal or ethnic dish.  Cooking can take the same path, some chefs, even home chefs, are comfortable with their five or ten dishes, perhaps adding a slight variation or two with a dash of this or a dash of that.  While for others, a new recipe is almost like a new type of chocolate, addictive, attractive and delicious before even entering the mouth.  My wife is like that, always ready to spend the money to get the ingredients to try the new recipe, the stalks of lemongrass that will see one put to use and the rest discarded, the shallots at 4x the price instead of the onions, the fresh nutmeg for grating with 90% of it later thrown away.  The recipe calls for that and that is that, she'll tell me.  But the price, I'll say...will the shallots really make that much of a difference?  Hmm, was I slowly turning into the moms?

    Reading Simmons' book (she's the host of the television cooking show, Top Chef, now entering its 14th season) makes one realize that for something as elemental as eating, there is another world out there if you're the adventurous type, and yet another world out there if you're the adventurous eater and have money.  Here's one table service she describes at another high-end Paris restaurant, Pierre Gagnaire:  Each course seems to arrive with countless components, in an endless parade of tiny plates.  Delicate gnocchi in red pepper sauce.  Flavors of autumn: wild mushrooms with seaweed and figs.  And then: tomato sorbet "en gelee;" "ris de veau en pappiotte;" risotto with white truffles and butter; turbot on braised leeks and herbs; baked pear with cherries and shallots; venison wrapped in seaweed with endive, ginger, and candied passion fruit; chocolate with orange blossom sorbet "en gelee;" veal fillets on a slice of veal liver; kidney on foccacia; beetroot; braised lettuce and spinach juice...And the cheese!  Epoisse, Livarot, Rocquefort emulsion; celery creme; chevre; and a hard cheese whose name gets lost in the flurry of it all.  To finish, the Grand Dessert Pierre Gagnaire: fraise de bois on shortbread; marshmellows made with rose water; fruit tartlets; three different chocolates stuffed with "eau de vie;" citrus; passion fruit "feuittes;" a shotglass of raspberry mousse; a slice of pineapple over aquavit sorbet; stewed pear with cherry compote; a quivering mousse on poached apple, papaya, and pomegranate; hazelnut and artichoke on pastry with creme fraiche; caramelized plum in raspberry puree with black tea caramel...One meal! (in Las Vegas, a similar meal at Gagnaire's offshoot, Twist at the Mandarin, runs about $350), and yet Simmons adds, "It was more than a decade ago now, but I can still taste that meal.

    Bradley Cooper plays a high-end chef in the movie Burnt, his quest for perfection resulting in dish after dish being thrown into the trash.  Consistency but always changing is his motto; the people eating at the restaurant he works for want the best tastes and flavors, but also always want something new.  His quest nearly drives him mad.  And yet, in Simmons' book, it is much the same attitude for many of the talented chefs she mentions.  As she dives into desserts (which she loves) she somewhat sums up this drive for flavor and newness and discovery: ...the pleasure of dessert is not only derived from a complex list of plated ingredients like manjari caramel mousse, passion fruit gelee, and pineapple sauce or a carefully constructed mille-feuille with layers of mocha cream and spun sugar.  It can come in the form of the humblest scoop of ice cream, roasted fruit, or chocolate chip cookie.  No matter how you slice it, dessert's purpose is not to sustain us.  It doesn't fulfill any biological need; it is not a requirement for health or nourishment by any medical authority.  Dessert is a simple splendor, craved and rhapsodized for its ability to uplift and comfort.  In short, to make us happy...And a little happiness is never a bad thing.  It shouldn't be something we have to earn or deserve.  It's about relishing a moment of joy and satiety in our hectic, complicated lives.  If a few bites of chocolate help along the way, so be it.

    Jumping a bit away from this, A House of My Own, the memoir by Sandra Cisneros (an excellent read, and this coming from someone who really doesn't care for memoirs that much), she puts all of this in a different light: When Thomas Wolfe was already a successful author someone asked him if he would consider moving back to North Carolina,  He said, "My writing is my home now."  So it was in the 1930s --when the writer Betty Smith moved to Chapel Hill she found herself at home here in more ways than one.  First, she found a place that was calm and safe and affordable for a single mom raising two kids, and calm and safe and affordable are essentials for a writer.  While living in Chapel Hill, Smith found another home.  She came home to a book that would give her permission to write her own bestseller, "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn."  Wolfe's "Of Time and the River" guided her back home.  It was while living in Chapel Hill that Smith was able to see her childhood more clearly, see her Brooklyn, admit what set her memories apart from others in Chapel Hill, from her own Brooklyn family.  So often you have to run away from home and visit other homes first before you can clearly see your own.

    As I watched my wife cook --and even though at least half of the recipes she tries are just so-so in the end, in her opinion-- I could and can see the anticipation in her face, the excitement and worry as she watches the oven or checks on the marinade.  This happens whether company is coming or if she is cooking just for the two of us (and often just for herself since many of her recipes deal with meat).  Perhaps that is what all of this cooking is about, a chef wanting consistency and yet change, hidden inside each of us.  Some of us have the courage (and perhaps in some cases, the money) to break free and venture out, to move beyond just getting nourishment and move forward to getting pleasure.  My uncle used to love the cooked eyes of lambs, something repugnant to me but something that he could taste with pleasure some decades later in his memory.  We don't have to eat bugs or eels (both are regular menu items in much of the world), but then they might be quite delicious.  Perhaps it is all just a matter of leaving "home" in order to truly appreciate where we came from.  A simple dish can take us there...but only if we're willing to try something new.