Food in Fiction: Moby Dick

"A warm savory steam from the kitchen served to belie the apparently cheerless prospect before us. But when that smoking chowder came in, the mystery was delightfully explained. Oh, sweet friends! hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuit, and salted pork cut up into little flakes; the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt. Our appetites being sharpened by the frosty voyage, and in particular, Queequeg seeing his favourite fishing food before him, and the chowder being surpassingly excellent, we despatched it with great expedition."

Moby Dick, or, The Whale
Written by Herman Melville
First published in 1851

Day 39: A Pinch of Salt

Potage Julienne D'Arblay a.k.a. potato-leek soup with veggie sticks

Making sauces and soups, as we've done so far, has provided a really good lesson in how seasoning can bring out flavors, not just add to them. As opposed to pretty much any solid piece of food, experimenting with salt in soup is pretty painless: add a pinch of salt, stir, taste. Repeat as necessary.

And it probably is necessary. The one consistent note I've been getting in class is more seasoning, more salt. I've had it in my head to salt as little as possible because of vague health reasons I have no recollection of learning. It's just one of those things – salt bad! – that I'm now having to fight because it really can bring a dish over the finish line.

The key, of course, is not to go overboard. If it tastes salty, you've gone way too far and you're pretty much screwed. You can try diluting with water, but that'll dilute everything else, too.

Too much salt doesn't always result in saltiness on the tongue. I toyed with salt levels with a soup I'd brought home from class and put in a tad much. The flavors were really strong, but the soup left a strange lingering sensation on my tongue, almost like a mild burn from blowing out my taste buds.

When to salt is another issue I'm just now getting the hang of. Typically, at least with soups, the salt goes in last. The addition of other ingredients (especially salty ones, like cheese) and evaporation can really screw things up if salt is added too early.

Salt can also save time. A lot of soups (and dishes in general) start with sauteing vegetables, and salt can help pull the moisture out and speed things along.

By the way, as far as I know, mention of salt in the cooking world almost always refers to kosher salt. That's all we have in our kitchens at school. It's larger and easier to pinch, has no additives, and can even add a textural crunch if added last.

Day 38: Vichywhat? Vichywho?

Our chef-instructor demonstrated three soups yesterday, one of which provides a great example of how naming conventions, especially in the food world and especially when the French language is involved, can bring a hefty amount of mystique.

Exhibit P: Potato-leek soup. Or potage parmentier in French, apparently named for potato advocate Antoine-Augustin Parmentier (Google translate tells me potato in French is la pomme de terre). I presume the knife cut, which we practice on potatoes in class, is named for him, too.

Garnish the soup with julienned vegetables and it becomes potage julienne d'arblay, named for English novelist and French officer's wife Frances Burney D'Arblay. Because in those days they didn't have megacorporations to purchase naming rights like Whole Foods' potage julienne presented by AT&T.

Serve it cold and it more or less becomes vichyssoisse, named of course for the town of Vichy, one-time capital of German-occupied France during World War II. And yet, Julia Child, in her Mastering the Art of French Cooking, refers to vichyssoise as an American invention. I'll take her word for it.

Food in Fiction: Bright Lights, Big City

The smell of bread recalls you to another morning. You arrived home from college after driving half the night; you just felt like coming home. When you walked in, the kitchen was steeped in this same aroma. Your mother asked what the occasion was, and you said a whim. You asked if she was baking. "Learning to draw inferences at college, are we," you remember her asking. She said she had to find some way to keep herself busy now that her sons were taking off. You said that you hadn't left, not really. You sat down at the kitchen table to talk, and the bread soon started to burn. She had made bread only two other times that you could recall. Both times it had burned. You remember being proud of your mother then for never having submitted to the tyranny of the kitchen, for having other things on her mind. She cut you two thick slices of bread anyway. They were charred on the outside but warm and moist inside.

Bright Lights, Big City
by Jay McInerney
First published in 1984

Day 37: Multitasking

I have never been a huge believer in multitasking as far as office jobs are concerned. To me, it's a buzzword, like team player and fast learner and self-starter, that people throw around during interviews. It basically means "I know how to stop one task, do a second task, then resume the first task."

We had our first cooking practical yesterday. I had things on the back burner. Also, the front burner and the oven and the cutting board and several containers. Simmering and reducing and straining and chopping. It was a test of timing and multitasking.

We essentially had an hour to make and present three sauces: béchamel, beurre blanc, and hollandaise. Our chef-instructor recommended we all make ourselves personal Cliff's Notes versions of the recipes on index cards so we didn't waste time reading our notebooks because, as he explained, being fast is as important as being good in professional kitchens.

I took the index card thing a step further and created an almost literal step-by-step list of actions, including when I'd step away from the stove to wash utensils or grab more equipment. 

I was hoping to finish in a shade over 30 minutes by completing my beurre blanc and hollandaise while the béchamel was simmering. I ended up finishing the béchamel before the hollandaise. Clearly, I'm not Iron Chef/Top Chef/Chopped material quite yet. I finished with about eight minutes to spare.