Experiential Experimentation

I choose to taste with attentiveness. Bite into a jalapeno. Nothing.  Just the taste of a green pepper. Take another bite, and hit a seed. Suddenly heat hits the back of the throat, just a speck, like tickle of a cough, only this one feels like it’s going to close my throat down and I won’t be able to breathe. Curiously, it doesn’t go any further back than that, doesn’t even overwhelm the soft palate. Instead, it rushes forward, sending a feeling of warmth, then of burning down the right side and toward the front of the tongue. I think, that must be the taste buds, but that is because I have forgotten that heat isn’t a taste, it is a sensation, like pain. Then the heat gets on my lip, my lower lip, making it feel like it is puffing up in a blister.

After the bite that contained the seed, I go back and take another bite of just the flesh. Somehow bursting the seed has caused the flesh of the pepper to catch fire. This time the heat does not go straight down my throat, instead, it assaults the roof of my mouth—but only briefly. Once again, it courses down my tongue and hits my lips, this time making both the lower and the upper one feel as if they are chapped by over-exposure to the sun.

I have read that water is not a good antidote to the heat of capsaicin, and that one would be better off drinking milk or eating bread—something bland, containing carbs or fat—because these will block the capsaicin from binding to the pain receptors. Instead, I reason, mint is cool. It is supposed to be cool.

Mouth wash. So, I take a hit of this anti-cavity mouthwash. The burn starts at the tip of my tongue, not too severe, then a slight hit in the back of my throat, after which I feel it on the sides of my tongue, and under my tongue, where it seems to combine with a bitter taste. The whole thing dissipates in less than the time recommended for swishing the stuff around in my mouth to prevent cavities. Unlike the jalapeno, it doesn’t continue to smolder, and although its effect seems strong, it isn’t actually painful. What’s the element that makes this burn?

Researching this led me to a lot of message boards and “peer to peer” information sources. Many of these predate Wikipedia (floating, like antediluvian ghosts in cyberspace), and they remind you of why it’s important to know what the source of your information is. There are a lot of unsubstantiated opinions out there. They also remind me of the heated (no pun intended) discussions I used to have with my best friend, and longtime roommate (you know who you are), years ago. After one particularly impassioned argument—and I have no memory of what the bone of contention was—we both sheepishly admitted that neither of us had any factual information to back up our points of view. We then came to the mutual conclusion (again, based upon our feelings, not upon any statistical evidence), that all of our fiercest arguments centered on issues about which neither one of us was sufficiently informed.

So, many people suggested that mouthwash burns because it has alcohol in it, although others contended that most mouthwash actually did NOT have alcohol in it. I checked my bottle; mine did—actually, it’s around 40 proof, thus vying with the ginger liqueur we keep in the kitchen (which, incidentally, coats the tongue with a soothing warmth, followed by a slight frisson of a burn—I think that’s the ginger—but I digress). This idea that the more alcohol, the more burn. . . well, my personal experience doesn’t back that up. A very high proof vodka can taste dangerously—extremely dangerously—smooth going down. Then some people said that chlorhexidine was probably responsible for the burning sensation, but, although my very nonscientific Web surf turned up the information that this substance could possible cause chemical burns to the skin of premature babies, it actually is not present in the particular bottle of mouthwash I am currently sampling.

In researching the chemicals that are suspended in the alcohol that apparently provides the basis for my mouthwash, I see that there is one that is supposed to make my teeth stronger, one that is supposed to make the other ingredients dissolve better, at least one that is tough on dirt and stains (it’s also present in laundry detergent), several that are there to add the (supposedly) pleasing purple color, several there to sweeten it up, and several that are preserving the freshness, even after the bottle is open. I could have sworn that the burn comes from some sort of mint, but it isn’t listed. The experiment is inconclusive.

More exploration of the properties of mint, menthol, and mouthwash are necessary.

What is Hot?

In beginning this decidedly non-scientific investigation into the nature of hotness in food, I learned many things. The first thing I learned—and you probably already know this—is that heat is not a taste. Even though we experience the hotness in our mouths, when we ingest something, the sense we are experiencing is not taste. Apparently we have these things called nociceptors--basically sensory receptors that respond to pain—that are located all over our body (like in our skin and our eyes), as well as in our mouths, and these, rather than our taste buds, are the apparati that are telling us that our mouths are on fire. Anyone who’s ever cut up a habenero without gloves on can attest to the similarity between the sensation in the hands and in the mouth. 

            I also found out that this whole concept of taste--which inevitably brings up the concept of smell—is a poetic concept--even when it’s a scientific concept. I think this is worth mentioning, even though it’s a bit outside the main point of this series. Probably this sounds obvious to you: of course taste is a poetic concept, you’re thinking; poets have been using taste in a connotative and evocative way for centuries. True, but what I mean is, the scientific investigation of taste and smell is as much poetry as it is science. How else could a scientific community come to the conclusion that the taste buds in and of themselves are capable of discerning only four flavors: salty, sweet, sour, and bitter, and then, sometime within the last twenty-five years or so, allow the addition of another basic taste called “umami” which is described as “a savory and long lasting and coating sensation” of the tongue. Why can this basic taste only be labeled using a Japanese word? And the words “long-lasting and coating” sound more like “mouth feel” words than like “taste” words. Maybe “ice cream” or “gravy” should also be basic taste sensations, because they also coat the mouth with long lasting flavor.

            Then there is the interaction of taste and smell. Why is chocolate a smell, rather than a flavor?  This certainly begs more research and more thought, but it just seems to me that any area of investigation that is based, at least in part, upon self-reporting, as taste and smell inevitably are, is an art as much as a science.

            I also learned about the difference between analytic and synthetic combos, which was something I had no idea of before. Analytic means a combo like a chord, where you can determine what the simple strains are that create the harmony. Synthetic doesn’t mean what I thought it meant—which is “fake” like something that emulates fur, but is actually polyester--it means combining stuff so that the strains of the original stuff that were combined disappear into the new synthesis of the combination. One can no longer determine what the original ingredients were. It sounds kind of like alchemy, but it also sounds. . . well, subjective. I mean maybe the scents and the flavors all come together, so that, for me, a new flavor delight has been synthesized. But you still taste hint of carrot, bouquet of chocolate, after-shock of mushroom. That doesn’t necessary mean you enjoy your food any the less (think of the wide range of food associations used by expert wine tasters).

            Lastly (but only lastly for the moment), I found out that, although many people think of  capsaicin as the only way that food can be made hot, they are wrong. Capsaicin is found in peppers, I mean, those peppers that are related to the vegetables in the nightshade family, some of which are not hot—like tomatoes and eggplants—and some of which are—like jalapenos, habaneros, chili peppers, etc.. Things like peppercorns, mustard, horseradish, ginger, alcoholic beverages, mouthwashes, etc., derive their heat from other chemical sources.

            More ruminations, investigations, as well as hands-and-mouth-on taste tests commence in the next post.

HEAT: The First Betrayal

The first time I ever tasted anything hot, it was with my body, not with my mouth. I was eating my favorite fruit at the time, or else I might not have made the connection between pain and heat, between pleasure and betrayal.

It was February, and I could not have been more than three. I was wearing my bedraggled snow jacket, surely a hand-me-down, and in colors and patterns--of blue and grey fleur de lis, I seem to remember--designed not to show the dirt. The fake fur that edged the hood was flat, pilled, and clumpy. Although it was February, it was balmy, one of those rare days in winter when Nature teases you with the promise of Spring, only to turn around next day and blast everything with a wind icy as arctic tundra. Of course, at the time I had youth’s inability to visualize the future, so I did not anticipate the inevitable. I was standing outside on the front stoop, sticky and hot in my jacket, and had undone the zipper, to the extent that my three year old hands were able.

I was eating a naval orange. I wish it were still a favorite, but, alas, the panoply of choice has made my taste more sophisticated and now I have to take supplements in order to replicate the benefits of the orange. I was thrilled by the light resistance my teeth encountered, biting into the membrane, so quickly followed by the machine gun bursts of sweet-sweet-sweet-tart, as the sacs of flavor yielded to the pressure of the bite.

Suddenly, I felt a sharp hot pain in my chest. It started out in one, tiny place, and then radiated out. I yelped, and grabbed the troubled spot, but that seemed to instigate a brand new tiny stab wound with the same spreading heat.

My mother came running out of the house, still holding the rag with which she’d been wiping out the fireplace. “Why are you crying?” she asked, more annoyed by the interruption that my self-dramatizing ways inevitably caused, than concerned about my present predicament.

“I hurt! I hurt!” I yelled, pointing to my half undone zipper. My mother dropped the rag, and pulled the zipper all the way to half mast, and a bee straggled out. “You’ve got bees in your jacket,” my mother said. “They’re going to keep on stinging you unless you take it off.”

The bees, like everything else, had been awakened by the false promise of Spring. Apparently, upon arising, they’d sensed the sugary nectar emanating from my snack, and come flying over. How they’d then managed to trap themselves in my snow suit is not entirely clear.

Several dead bees fell out of snow jacket when my Mom removed it. I wasn’t allergic to bees, so the pain didn’t last too long, but the shock of having been assaulted in the midst of such a pleasurable experience stayed with me.

Six months later my Mom and Dad and I sit down at the expandable maple dining table. The menu is one that I’ve happily anticipated. It’s mashed potatoes, and sausages, from the German butchers. I love the German butcher. When I go to his store with my Mom, he always hands me a slice of homemade bologna, or maybe a tiny cocktail frank. It’s all good, soft and salty and sweet in the mouth, pliant yet chewy between the teeth, tasting like a clean pig, so pink. This day my father has gone to the butcher’s on his way home from work, so I’ve missed out on my porky treat, and look forward even more to the dinner.

I look at my plate; the white fluffy potatoes, with just enough lumpeness to assert their freshness, the plump, brown glistening sausages on the side. My mother has cut the sausage for me, just as she’d been responsible for peeling the orange. I pick up one of the coins of sausage with my fingers and pop it into my mouth. Fire stabs the tip of my tongue and quickly spreads to the roof of my mouth. I scream.

My Dad stands up quickly. He is still wearing his suit and tie, and he looks weary, tense, and alarmed. “What’s wrong with her?” he asks my Mom.

My mom, who has just tasted the food on her own plate, also stands. “What did you buy?” she asks my Dad, a look of disgust on her face.

“What?” he is bewildered. And I am still screaming. The after burn gets worse as I breathe in and out, I feel like it will never go away.

My mom walks purposefully into the kitchen. Returning, she says, “Drink this,” handing me a glass of water. I do, and it seems like cool relief for a few seconds, but then the pain comes back. “Keep drinking,” Mom commands. She looks accusingly at my Dad.

“What?” he asks, guilty, and clueless.

“You bought the HOT,” she says. “You bought the hot sausage. I always buy the sweet.”

“I didn’t know,” says my Dad.

“She’s never had the hot,” says my Mom, and my Dad crumples under the burden of parental guilt. “Oh, honey, I am sooo sorry,” he says, hugging me tightly.

And I cry and cry, no longer sure if I am crying because of my burning mouth, or because of the rush of feelings that overwhelm me—that my father could betray me so thoughtlessly, and at the same time, love me so thoroughly.

The Hotness

I mean, as in food. This will be the start of a series that investigates the various types of hotness that we taste and smell. It will be a combination of diary entries about how and where things taste, as well as (to be researched) scientific info as to why the mouth, nose, and the rest of the apparati that deal with things alimentary react the way they do. Readers' queries and knowledgeable contributions are strongly encouraged.

Here are my first two observations:

Spicy V8 Juice, nothing in the front of the mouth or on the tongue, but a lot of heat right where the epiglottis arches into the throat.

Chinese mustard Immediate heat, the hard palate to the mid palate and mostly up the nose. Disapating quickly.

More coming soon.

Chocolate Chiffon Behemoth

I am holed up here in the apartment with the fans going, because someone--I don’t remember who--but someone who sounded authoritative on the radio—said that as long as the temperature does not exceed 86 degrees, the moving air created by a fan will cool you just as well as an air conditioner. And that is good, because our air conditioners are broken, and I am still unemployed. What I am ostensibly doing, isolated and insulated by white noise, is furiously looking for a job, since these days, one will find more jobs by sitting in front of a computer than one will ever find pounding the pavement.

            However, what I am actually doing is avoiding the heat, avoiding spending money I don’t have, and avoiding the computer, while I hone my attention deficit—or “distractedness,” as Mark affectionately calls it—by finding all kinds of odd and sundry projects around the house. Practicing piano, perfecting my pushups, polishing pagan paeans. Well, no, the last one was just for the alliteration.

            I have also been cooking. Too much the last couple of days, I am afraid. Yesterday was almost entirely devoted to a chocolate chiffon cake, which neither Mark nor I should eat. I woke up bright and early the other morning and decided to make it because, as I rationalized to myself, there were too many egg whites in the freezer, and they were getting too old. Which was true, but I probably should have just tossed them.  Especially since not wasting those egg whites entailed going to the supermarket and buying more ingredients that I did not have in the house. Since I did not want to spend money on public transportation by going further than my local supermarket, I ended up paying a premium for what my supermarket considers an exotic ingredient: cream of tartar. It cost seven dollars for a supply that will probably last me the rest of my life. Had I bought it online, I could have bought enough for four lifetimes for the same price.

            Then there was the question of the egg whites in the freezer. How many eggs, exactly, did that represent? I was following the recipe on page 710 of the latest edition of The Joy of Cooking, and I am fully cognizant that baking does not brook the kind of latitude that I often take with cooking. If I wanted the cake to come out, I would have to follow the recipe to the letter. The recipe called for five egg yolks, and eight egg whites, so I logically guesstimated that the amount in the freezer equaled approximately three whites.

            As I started beating up my room temperature egg whites, with the required cream of tartar, I noticed that the meringue was bulking up quite a lot, but it had been a long time since I’d made a chiffon cake, so I decided to believe it was supposed to do that.  When I folded all the ingredients together, the batter had grown so massive that I had to ask Mark to help me wrestle it into the tube pan.

            “Maybe this should go into two pans?” Mark suggested.

            “It’s fine,” said I.

            An hour later, with the batter bubbling, rising, and taking over the oven like a monster from a cheap horror film, I conceded that Mark was correct.

            Considering the mess I was going to have clean up, I really wanted to save something from this endeavor. So when I wrestled the cake pan out of the oven, cutting away  the stalactites of batter that now attached it firmly to the rack, door, and sides, I realized that the only way to save face was to cut away a portion of it that might be construed to be a cake shape, and cover it with frosting. After all, I reasoned, I did have confectioner’s sugar, butter and some chocolate leftover from Christmas that really ought to be used up. And there must be some jam in the back of the fridge that would serve as a filling.

            So, what started out as a “save the food” mission, which shouldn’t have taken longer than an hour, ended up being a cooking and cleaning adventure of over five hours. Still, both Mark and our friend Roy confirmed that the results were tasty.

            “It’s a chocolate chiffon behemoth,” I explained to Roy, as he was forking up a mouthful.

            “May I make an editorial suggestion?” he said. “Maybe you want to call it a chocolate behemoth instead. If you call it a chocolate chiffon behemoth, it sounds like the behemoth is wearing a tutu.”

            “And that is exactly the way I want it to sound,” said I.

Chocolate Chiffon Behemoth with Chocolate Butter Cream frosting and Currant Jelly Filling

            For the Cake

• Follow the recipe for Chocolate Chiffon Cake on page 710 of the 75^th Anniversary Edition of The Joy of Cooking.
• Instead of the eight egg whites required, however, use ten or eleven.
• Make sure that when you whip up egg whites with the cream of tartar and the sugar, you use a really big bowl, and you keep beating until the meringue is really glossy and forms stiff peaks. It takes a while, if you aren’t lucky enough to have one of those fabulous Kitchen Aide standing mixers, and I am not.
• Fold the egg whites into the chocolate mixture. Or vice versa--just make sure that you’re doing the folding in your biggest bowl.
• Pour the batter into the ungreased springform tube pan, and for god’s sake, put the whole thing on a really big cookie sheet, thereby protecting yourself from prolonged contact with Easy-Off a few hours hence.
• Bake. About fifteen minutes longer than the recipe calls for. By all means, do the toothpick test in the thickest part of the beast before you take it out of the oven, and do not be dismayed by the excess. You will be able to excise the cake pan without a jaws of life.
• Remove from the oven and cool. Cut away the excess cake to free the pan. You will need a knife to cut, and a spatula to wiggle around under the cake pan to separate it from the cookie sheet.
• Maybe use a very old cookie sheet that you won’t mind throwing out if it gets too messed up.
• Remove the cake from the pan, by carefully releasing the spring, and easing the sides away from the cake. Turn it over to remove the bottom/top.
• Cut the cake in half horizontally, so it can be filled.

Butter Cream Frosting

2 oz unsweetened chocolate (2 squares), room temperature

4 oz unsweetened butter (half a stick), room temperature

10 to 12 oz of confectioner’s sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 to 4 TBSP of half and half

• Put the chocolate into a metal bowl, and fit that bowl into a saucepan with water in the bottom. Ideally, you’ve got a double boiler, but you can make do. Put the pan over a low heat and let the chocolate melt at a lazy pace.
• Remove from the heat and let it stand for five minutes, then add the butter.
• Use the electric mixer to blend the chocolate and the butter. Make sure you mix them very well.
• Beat in vanilla.
• Add sugar, gradually. After each addition, beat until smooth. If it gets too lumpy or stiff, add some of the half and half.
• Continue adding and mixing until you have a glossy, stiff but not too stiff chocolate substance, that looks exactly like canned frosting, but tastes much, much better.

Currant Jelly Filling

• Open a jar of currant jelly. Homemade is best, although I won’t be having any more of that anytime soon, since the currant bushes all died from some sort of blight.
• Spread a generous amount of the jelly on the bottom half of the cake. Fit the top back on, and let the jelly act as glue.

Very Important, the Behemoth Decorations

I hope you didn’t throw out (or eat) all of the leftover bits of cake. Now is the time to crumble and crush them into delicious chocolate crumbs.

Assemblage

• You’ve got your currant filled cake. Make sure it’s on a tray or something that you can refrigerate for a while so that the whole thing can “marry” before you serve it.
• Spread the chocolate frosting all over the cake. Go ahead, be generous, be rustic; remember, this is a behemoth.
• Strew crumbled chocolate crumbs all over the top and sides of the cake.
• Cool for at least an hour before serving.

Yum.

Note: Allow time to clean the oven, and all the other bits of the kitchen that were involved in this process.

The No Recipe Recipe for Disaster

Or, Self-Pity Plus a Little Wine Does not a Good Muse Make

I really enjoyed Kitchen Confidential: the way those Bad Boys smoked, drank, swore, stayed up too late, trashed the place, and maintained their mean knife skills—and all while working in top notch kitchens. Didn’t really want to be Anthony Bourdain, but maybe I wanted to be Bourdain more than I wanted to be M. F. K. Fisher. The closest thing I had to an Outlaw aspiration—okay, yeah, maybe I did want to be a kitchen Rock God.

I enjoy going with the flow, throwing food around with flare. Have had occasions—weeks at a time, really—during which I routinely let blood whilst in the midst of wild chopping frenzies. Anyone who has read my blogs knows that I am into the reinvention of food—ingredients that don’t quite come together in one format re-imagined and reconstituted; awe-inspiring success rising from the ashes of failure like a phoenix.

There are times, however, when the slightly out of date, or just plan odd, ingredients that crowd the back of the refrigerator are no longer viable as anything other than compost. Just as there are times when an improvisational cook should follow a recipe. Or better still, turn out the light and quietly leave the kitchen, assuming that anyone—say, an understanding husband?—who really wants to eat something when he comes home, can make himself a bowl of cereal or a plate of slowly scrambled eggs.

Lately I have been feeling a little too sorry for myself, and a little too sorry for the scary looking cheeses that go on sale at my local purveyor. I’ve been out of work too long, and it’s this weird season right now, winter still, but with spring just aching to burst. The sultry sun tempts the crocuses, who send up eager and innocent green shoots, and then the icy winter air freeze burns them, retribution for their curiosity. This combination of too much idleness and peculiar weather depresses me. And so, I trudge up to Garden Gourmet in the Bronx (although we call it Gordon’s, as in Gordon Garmet—a little cockney, guv?), because I have the time to cook, while the cherished Pig does not, and at least it is a reason for me to go outside.

Once I get there I am leery of the wine cheese from Bulgaria with the black rind, and the oozing thing that looks like a Danish Port Salut, only it’s not. But as I stand there, staring at these unlovely comestibles and their bargain prices, I begin to feel protective of them, not to mention thrifty, and so, I buy them.

I should say something about what constitutes bad cheese, at least in our household, because we are of slightly different minds, or mouths, about this. Mark has no problem with things that taste blue. Cheeses that are dimpled with blue, or some other color, contain cultivated penicillin mold. They have a tangy taste that goes up your nose and inhabits the front of your tongue and mouth. I appreciate these flavors more in theory than in actuality, but dear Pig claims to enjoy them when they are very strong—almost to the point where they are “about to walk off the plate,” as my mother would have said. The other kind of bad cheese, the one I have more tolerance for, is the one that is like a tilsit. This has a pungent, fungal taste, and registers strongest on the back of the tongue and down the throat. Such cheeses start to get bitter as they ripen. When they exceed their maturity they taste very much like a car-clearing vagrant on the subway smells.

Some of the bargain cheeses I buy encompass the worst of both tastes, although most fall in the fungal to bitter category. The taste buds may also detect in these foul and hoary fromages a hint of gasoline—a giveaway that they are processed cheese, just to add insult to injury!

So, the other day I was at home. The sun was very bright and I do like a bright sun, especially after a winter of SAD. However, on this particular afternoon I was discontent and at loose ends. In spite of my oft repeated claim that I am self-sufficient and could amuse myself endlessly without ever going to work, I was having difficulty mustering enthusiasm for any of my passions. And the sun, shining so relentlessly, was a constant reprimand to my inactivity. I began to wish that it was mid-January again, when the rays of the sun are so weak that they cannot illuminate ones flaws so brightly—and not at all after 4:15 in the afternoon. Here it was, nearly five, and it still wasn’t offering a reprieve.

I re-read the front page of the newspaper (the virtual newspaper, that is) and the goings on in the Middle East and northern Africa made my head swim, again. I played one of my vocal practice CDs and attempted to sing along with it, and actually dozed off mid-scale. Since I was already feeling utterly dull, I rationalized that it wouldn’t be a crime to transform dull into mellow. So I poured myself a glass of white wine. I held the glass in my hand and squinted out the window, willing the sunlight to lessen, ashamed of myself for thinking that way.

When I went back to the fridge for a refill, I spotted a large piece of oozy cheese with a brown rind, one I’d mistakenly believed I’d disposed of earlier. “I should really toss that,” I thought, but I was feeling too inert to do it. I poured another glass and left the cheese alone. “The cheese stands alone,” I said aloud, nearly moving myself to tears. The feeling turned into a thought and actually pierced my lackluster gray matter. Poor cheese, left alone to molder on the shelf. All it wanted was to be needed, to be used and useful, and nobody wanted it. Nobody was calling it on the phone, and asking it to act in a play or write an article, or even asking it how it was feeling. The cheese was reminding me of myself.

I returned to the refrigerator, for an additional splash, and I just could not bear to see it sitting there so forlornly, so I took it out. Surely something could be done with this cheese so that it would feel better about itself, regain its self respect.

I tasted a corner. Even with my taste buds slightly anesthetized, its tang made the hairs on my arm stand on end. Maybe if I took some from the middle—really, that was a bit better. It wasn’t exactly what I would call an eating cheese though. . .perhaps a cooking cheese?

And this is when I had the blinding brainwave that should have probably inspired me to leave the kitchen at once, but unfortunately, it did not. Gougères! I could bake the cheese into those little French cheese puffs that everyone likes so much! Surely the flavor of the cheese would soften when combined with butter, eggs, and flour, and baked at 400 degrees!

At last the sun was setting, and I had to turn on the kitchen light as I set about turning old cheese into savory pastry. Gougères are made from cream puff dough, or choux, combined with cheese. You combine lots butter, some water, and some flour, and cook it, stirring constantly, until it becomes a thick, dry paste. You then remove this from the heat, beat in four large eggs until the mixture is satiny smooth, and wala, you put a cookie sheet covered with dollops of the stuff into the oven and out come cream puffs. Or, if you’ve added cheese, you have Gougères.

The problem was, I did not have much butter and I only had one egg. No problem. I felt weirdly energized. I was possessed by that fearless, Rocker God of Inspiration in the Kitchen. “We can do this thing,” I said to the cheese. “We don’t need cookbooks, and we sure don’t need supermarkets. We’re fuckin’ off the grid, baby!” The Rocker God of Inspiration in the Kitchen swears gratuitously like that.

So, instead of butter, I used half and half. And, I added a bunch of baking soda to the flour since I did not have enough eggs. It did not really turn into a dry paste when I cooked it on the burner, but I was not worried. I cut the rind away from the cheese, as well as the outer layer, with a very sharp knife. Then I chopped it into rough, soft hunks. I was performing a ritual sacrifice!

I added the cheese to the thickened, liquid. It tasted good! You could barely notice the cheese’s pungent bitterness. I beat in the one egg. The whole thing wasn’t exactly coalescing but I felt confident.

Just to be on the safe side, though, I oiled the baking sheets. Then I spooned the faux choux onto the sheets. Choux usually stands in cute little humps; this did not. It spread itself out on the tray. But I knew that because I’d added leavening, it was going to be fine. It might not be like any Gougères  you’d ever had before, but it was going to be great! I might even have to enlist the Pig to come up with a new name for it.

I baked them at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes, and then looked in. They were pale, and pretty flat. I lowered the temperature to 350 and baked for another ten. They were brownish, but still, remarkably flat, considering all the baking soda. And, don’t forget, the egg.

Right around the time I’d started sacrificing the cheese, I’d also knocked off drinking the wine, so by the time I took them out of the oven, the Rocker God of Inspiration in the Kitchen had a more tenuous possession of me. I removed them from the oven, and allowed them to cool for ten minutes.

When I went to do a taste test, I could not lift the Gougères off of the baking sheet. Did I mention this was a nonstick pan, which I had greased? So I got a spatula.

Turns out, none of the Gougères would come off of either of the sheets. They adhered. Like I’d glued them there and then covered the whole thing with varnish. Which would have been the outcome I’d have wanted if this were one of those decoupage projects I was so enamored of back around Christmas. But those weren’t edible. Apparently this wasn’t going to be either, but that had not been my intent.

After twenty minutes or so, I calmly admitted defeat. I was going to throw out the baking sheets, too, but instead I soaked them in boiling water and then attacked them with the spatula. Gradually the baked Gougères returned to their previous form, a sticky paste, albeit one with browned and hardened bits mixed in. I cleaned out the sink. I took out the garbage. I turned out the kitchen light. I retreated to the soothing now-darkness of the living room.

Later, when I heard Mark’s key in the door, I stood up. “I’m sorry,” I blurted as he came in the door. “I tried to cook something for you, but it was an unmitigated disaster!”

He stood there for a moment, all dressed up and handsome in his well made black suit, with the perfectly coordinated tie, shirt, and pocket square, his spit-shined shoes. He smiled. “Oh, that’s alright,” he said, “don’t worry about it. I didn’t get to eat lunch until nearly six pm, and that sandwich you packed was so big, I’m not even hungry.”

“Oh, that’s okay then,” I said, as he came over and gave me a squeeze. But it wasn’t, not quite, because the spontaneous, go with your impulses cooking project had failed. But as improvisers, we really have to learn to accept that. In the real world failing to plan may be planning to fail, but in improv if you plan too much, the spur of the moment decision that results in the “Oh My God where did that come from?” spark of brilliance will never be set free. If you want to have access to that muse, that genius, some of the time, you have to accept that you’re going to fall on your face, some of the time.

I was glad the Pig wasn’t hungry, though.

The Messy and Inconclusive Pleasures of Discovery

Before I say anything I would like to apologize publicly to my husband, Mark, who is “The Pig” in this blog. Mark doesn’t mind that he is The Pig, but it’s beginning to make me feel very guilty. If anyone behaves like “The Pig” in this marriage, it is me. It’s just that “Mrs. Talling’s Pig” is what Mark’s Dad used to call himself when he did something rude, like eating too much, or belching at the table. I never met Mark’s Dad—he was gone before we met—but I always thought that Mrs. Talling’s Pig was the greatest title. Mark doesn’t mind carrying on Neil’s (his Dad’s) tradition, but I thought I ought to make it clear that “The Pig” is so-called with the greatest love and respect.

On to today’s topic, which is the pleasure of discovery, or, to put it more bluntly, the extremely happy feeling that comes out of having a eureka! Moment, even when one is not quite sure what one is doing. I am an impulsive creature, certainly a product of the 60s. I always tell myself I was too young during that decade to be seriously affected, but of course that is nonsense. I have a complete disregard for order and repetitive practice as methodology—let chaos rule! Too bad that this credo lives cheek by jowl with the fear that grips this most timid person in the world, who feels bad that she is unable to make herself do anything by rote, since one part of her feels that that is perhaps the ONLY way to learn.

 Really my most vivid, and, one might say, chronic memory, is of myself sticking my face into the neat little water color box, with all its colors separated into perfect squares, and running the colors--their hard little tops having been made gelatinous and smooth by the addition of water—all over my face and into each other, until the entire box of paints, and my face, became a muddle of brown.  Whenever I did this I felt as if my evil side had triumphed.  I think I did it because I was frustrated. I could not paint the way that a disciplined person might; didn’t have the patience or the motor skills. And I wasn’t brave or talented enough to be an anarchist, and declare that the status quo was wrong, and that my version of painting was a statement, not a failure. But I could stick my face into the paints, and ruin them and myself.

Decades later I have managed to fool many people into believing that I am thoughtful and conscientious. There is a dogged, stick-to- ittiveness about me (stemming from fear), which convinces people that I am “serious.” Mostly, I have fooled people repeatedly by carrying around huge amounts of books, ever since I was small. As if I were that much more serious than they were, and was going to go home and read all of said books. In fact, I may be stronger for having carried them, but my brain isn’t bigger, because I never read them.

Somewhere along the line, while I was being very serious and they were not, other people learned to speak Spanish, and remember calculus, and do the New York Times Crossword. They managed to get law degrees and turn the major in Com Arts into something that paid. I have not done any of those things. I am far too flighty and undisciplined.

However, I am capable of making a childlike and enthusiastic investment into just about anything I attempt. That is my saving grace. And I happen to love food—purveying it, preparing it, serving it, and eating it—and although that is a very mixed blessing, it is at least a blessing of some kind. Through food I find myself engaged in community, science, history, art—and, most importantly, the kind of Eureka! Moments that one gets from conducting experiments.

So, the other day, when we had guests staying overnight—a rare occurrence, since our apartment is not that big, and not centrally located—we loaded up the larder. Much of what we bought came from the farmer’s market, including a half gallon of unpasteurized apple cider.  I was happy that the cider was unpasteurized, even though I knew that meant it would spoil more quickly. To me, its ephemeral nature made it fresher.

Late Saturday, the Pig pointed out to me that the cider had “turned” and was no longer appropriate to serve to our guests. I tasted it; it was fizzy, in a way that I found delightful. It reminded me that in the early days of our country, many people, even those who preferred tea-totalling, could not help imbibing alcoholic beverages. Insufficient refrigeration caused most beverages to ferment, over time, so if one wanted to drink anything other than spring water, one had to settle for a brew wherein the fermentation was at least, controlled. Hard cider. Beer. Fruit wines.

Still. I wasn’t about to serve it to guests. But. . . I could make pancakes with it! And see how well fermented cider served as a leavening agent.

Arising early the following morning, I combined:

• A half cup of vanilla yogurt
• Two eggs
• A tablespoon of melted butter
• A cup and a half of regular flour
• A quarter cup of old fashioned oats
• A quarter cup of coarse ground corn meal
• A half cup of hard cider
• A teaspoon of baking powder
• A half teaspoon of baking soda

I mixed it all together and let it sit for half an hour. It got kind of bubbly. It looked like yeast in action to me, but the batter had other rising agents in it—eggs, baking powder and soda, so I did not get too excited.

 I heated up our biggest nonstick griddle pan, and put some butter in the bottom. I added a handful of blueberries from the freezer, and allowed them to sizzle and pop for a few seconds, as they defrosted. Then I added a couple of circles of batter.  I let them sit (moving the berries about strategically so they imbued the cakes) until they were bubbling in the middle, then I turned them. After a few minutes, I removed the resulting pancakes and put them onto a warming pan in the oven. I repeated this process several times, and, as always happens, the later iterations were far more uniform in terms of browning and rising than the earlier ones.  After several batches were processed, I made up individual plates, and stuck the butter and the bottle of B Grade Vermont syrup out on the table.

The guests enjoyed the results, which tasted sweet, vanilla-y, and whole grainy, but were very light.  I glanced at the remaining batter, after everyone declared they could eat no more. It had nearly doubled in bulk! There was something going on—something beyond what one might expect from a quick bread. I felt that I might have, through the use of the hardening cider, captured a wild yeast.

And this was very exciting to me! Yeast baking is very satisfying. It involves both skill and intuition--learning to recognize the temperature of the liquid, without the help of a thermometer; learning to recognize by feel when the ball of dough is, indeed, as smooth as a baby’s bottom. But yeast baking always begins with measuring spoons, precise amounts of yeast, a lot of control. When both my parents were alive, my mother went through an extended period of baking all the bread they ate. She had a sour dough culture that she’d kept “alive” for years. I’d never done that; I didn’t trust myself to maintain the “starter” and feed it at appropriate intervals in order to keep it going. My God, I didn’t have faith that I could care for a non-sentient bread culture; no wonder I didn’t believe in my ability to take charge of a dog or a baby.

I still had some of the hard cider left, and a vague memory of how my mom had “started a starter.”

• I poured two cups of the fermenting cider into a ceramic bowl.
• I added a cup and a half of unbleached regular flour.
• Plus, a tablespoon of sugar and
• Half a tablespoon of sugar
• I let it sit out on the counter, covered by saran wrap, for around 12 hours. It had expanded, and was filled with bubbles. I stirred it until it calmed down.
• I added the remains of the cider, and another half cup of flour, plus a tablespoon of sugar. Approximately.
• I repeated this process for four days.

Day Four. At that point, the fermenting batter, which had seemed lively up until then, started to look played out. Oh, it was still rising, when given the chance, but it just wasn’t displaying the enthusiasm it had previously, its appearance set off a familiar alarm—this is what happens when I buy pre-prepared pizza dough and wait too long before using it.

So, I decided that it was time to turn my culture into bread. I stirred the semi-risen mixture in the bowl, until it collapsed. Then I added

• Four cups of flour.

I stirred until I could stir no more, then I kneaded. It was such a pleasure to feel the dough; the way in which it had developed the glutinous strands that appear in a yeast bread, the way in which the texture got more and more satiny and pliable, the more I kneaded.

Poured olive oil into the bowl, so that the dough wouldn’t stick, then returned the kneaded dough to the bowl. Covered it with a tea towel and let it sit in the oven (off) for six hours. It wasn’t quite as lively as I’d hoped it would be (of course not, and since I had no controls in this experiment, I can’t really tell you why), but it still seemed viable. Then I took it out of the oven, and punched it down again, divided it in half, kneaded each piece, then placed each one into a greased loaf pan. Repeated the cover-and-wait game, for another four hours. It rose, not as much as I’d hoped, but I decided it was time to bake. So, I took the loaf pans out, and put them on the range top, then preheated the over for ten minutes to 375.

Took an egg out of the fridge, separated it, and beat up the yolk, and then used a pastry brush to paint the tops. Then I put the loaves into the oven, and set the timer for 40 minutes.

Ended up leaving them in there for around 55 minutes, until they were risen, golden, and sounded sort of thumpy-hollow when I hit them on the top.

I freed them from the pans after they’d cooled for a  few minutes, and I could see pretty big bubbles on the underside, like either they hadn’t had enough time to rise, or they were really played out and those bubbles were their last gasp.

Anyway, after they cooled, I cut some slices and served them to the Pig with butter. He pronounced the flavor sort of bland, not markedly sour for sourdough, but with a good crumb.

To tell the truth, I was absolutely tickled that I was able to achieve such a breadlike substance without guidance or a recipe—or commercial yeast. I mean, I assume what I discovered was wild yeast, but I haven’t exactly collected a lot of corroboration.

However, I did discover this great blog, called wildyeastblog.com. And they have this marvelous page, http://www.wildyeastblog.com/2007/07/13/raising-a-starter/, which explains how to capture wild yeast, utilizing only flour, water, and time. It’s way more precise than my improvisational recipe, but I think I am going to try it out.  Just because I am impulsive doesn’t mean that I am incapable of following the rules.

POACHED!



My new Kindle, a thoughtful Christmas present from The Pig (who always gives thoughtful presents, whereas, yours truly, Mrs. Talling, almost never does) came loaded with the New Oxford Dictionary. The small grey, perfectly readable screen on the device informs me that the word poach comes from the Old French pochier, which originally meant to “enclose in a small bag.” Now it often means to “illegally hunt or catch game or fish on land that is not one’s own.”

I must admit, I lost interest in writing Mrs. Talling’s Pig over the holidays. I could blame the holiday season, but when I say that, it feels as if I am poaching, i.e., taking something from “land that is not [my] own.” Since I have been underly employed for some time now, I can hardly claim that I was stressed by the time off or lack thereof, and since I did not buy a single present for a single person, I cannot say that an excess of participation in the holiday madness is responsible for my loss of enthusiasm.

In fact, in many areas of my life I think I have been perpetually poaching—if not actively taking things that were not mine, at least allowing people to believe that I owned qualities or knowledge that I, in fact, did not. For example, because I have written and edited a bunch of books and articles that cover movement training for actors, some people assume that I must have trained extensively in that area. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am not a good dancer, and I am not certified in combat choreography. I never went to Paris and studied with Jaques Lecoq. My experience of the plastiques is utterly cursory.

I wanted to write about these trainings because I longed for the knowledge and the discipline, not because I had it.

And while we are confessing, I should add that even though I worked for the Metropolitan Opera, what I know about opera could fit into a thimble and what I like about opera would take up even less real estate. I never studied Latin and even though I was raised by people who spoke French, German, and Dutch, and took Spanish and Russian in school, I am utterly at sea when a language other than English is spoken. What else? I don’t remember any of the plots from Shakespeare aside from a few of the comedies AND I tend to find productions of Shakespeare’s plays boring. In addition, I have never read the Bible cover to cover, and I tend to forget all of the Greek myths.

However, I do know a fair amount about cooking. Although I tend to approach all recipes as the “great leveler”—any cuisine, any recipe can be bent to include the ingredients and especially the leftovers I already have in my refrigerator—I do make a wide of variety of dishes that encompass a plethora of cooking techniques.

Yet there is one simple technique that I never mastered. Much as I avoid talk of opera so that my lack of knowledge will not be glaringly obvious, I eschewed making this dish so that I would not be found out. Which brings us to the other meaning of poach, which is “to simmer in a small amount of water.” Specifically, to poach an egg.

Over the years, I have attempted to poach an egg upon rare occasions. For example, when I made a perfect Hollandaise sauce for steamed asparagus, and there were leftovers, I envisioned those green beauties enthroned upon a half an English muffin, toasted to golden perfection. And, between the slender chartreuse stalks, cloaked in lemony smoothness, and the wheaty crunch, there would be a soft and glistening white orb, which, when pierced by a fork, would release a warm and unctuous flow of orange yellow center.

Unfortunately, the egg transmogrified into something quite other when I attempted to concretize this image. Instead of inner and outer layers of distinction, upon hitting the boiling water, the egg became agitated, soon transforming itself into hard cooked threads of mottled white and yellow, more suited to egg drop soup than to variations on Eggs Benedict. Thereafter, I never renounced poached eggs, mind you; I just occluded them from my repertoire.

I had some hope, when a friend gave me an egg poacher for the microwave oven. It seemed so efficient, a simple round of plastic with perfect, circular indentations into which one was instructed to crack the eggs. Then the poacher was to be placed inside the oven, the power level and the time set, and all one had to do was to be mesmerized as the carousel twirled until the timer announced completion. Alas, as with so much microwave “cooking” simplicity did not guarantee a consistent, or even an edible, result. Sometimes the eggs were uncooked. Sometimes they were overcooked. At any rate they lacked a “je ne se qua”—which I am allowed to say, even though I don’t speak French—they were boiled eggs without the shells, no matter how done they were. I abandoned the concept once again.

In the meantime, my understanding and preparation of scrambled eggs had actually grown. Having read far too many diet books in my younger years, I assumed that the whole point of scrambling and omelets was to make the eggs as big as possible. Eggs should be puffy with whipped whites, frothy from added seltzer and baking soda, and placed beneath the broiler so that they rose even higher. After a long, long time, I realized that The Pig is actually quite discerning when it comes to taste and texture. He has no interest in a tough and puffy hugeness of eggs, and actually prefers a small and creamy serving. I learned how to be patient, stirring and stirring as the beaten eggs slowly coalesced into dense yellow curds and cream.

But as this year begins, and I struggle with a general malaise, which might or might not be attributable to the holiday or the post-holiday blues, I find myself drawn to dishes that go back to my childhood. Not necessarily the ones that I loved the best, or the ones that were the fussiest or most tied to my ethnicity—whatever that is—but the dishes that were sort of common and sustaining at the time, and which I have either avoided or overlooked in later life. For example, I made Boston Baked Beans the other day. Of course, I made a variation, because we had lots of maple syrup, leftover barbeque sauce, and dried white beans, but no molasses, tomato sauce, or kidney beans—but it came out well. Actually, I’m not sure if The Pig liked it better than Bushes, but it was respectable.

And so, yesterday morning when I woke up, and was lying in bed, waiting for the sun to join me, I started obsessing about poached eggs, and I thought I would give them another try. I had no new equipment or techniques, but I was feeling pretty confident. “Just remember,” I told myself, “vinegar in the water, and stir into a cyclone before you add the eggs.” I looked at the Pig, still sleeping—he had worked an insane number of hours the night before. So I crept off to the kitchen, and I did a trial run. I put water into a small, one-and-a-half quart sauce pan, and brought it to a boil. In the meantime, I cracked an egg into a custard dish, just to make sure that it was unbroken. I then added a tablespoon of vinegar to the water. When the water boiled, I stirred it vigorously, creating a whirlpool in the middle of the liquid. I slid the egg out of the dish and into the epicenter.

It held together! The edges feathered delicately, and made white, circular trails, but the mass held. I could see the white cooking while the yellow remained distinct and uncooked. I put the cover on the pot and left it there for 90 seconds, then fished it out with a slotted spoon.

The white was glistening and soft, only slightly resistant and rubbery, just as I’d dreamed. I had mistimed the yellow, though; the center was still underdone, and the yolk not thick enough. Still, I was quite pleased.

When The Pig got up and started shuffling about, I asked him if he’d like eggs for breakfast. He said yes. Our kitchen is small, so I waited as he dripped a fresh cup of coffee and took it over to the computer. Then I cracked two eggs into the custard cup, and put a half a roll into the toaster oven. Having had some difficulty removing my trial egg from the saucepan with the slotted spoon, I decided that this time I would try a shallower and smaller one-quart frying pan. I added the water and the vinegar and let it come to a boil, then stirred it into a perfectly contained storm. Then I slipped the eggs into the middle, where they behaved themselves just as perfectly. I put the cover on the pan, and this time, during the two and half minutes I allowed the eggs to simmer, I removed the roll from the toaster and slathered it with butter. Then I lifted the delicate and glowing eggs out of the water bath and put them on top, with a bit of salt and pepper.

The Pig pronounced it very tasty and perfectly cooked.

I cannot tell you why, but this has been my most satisfying experience of the New Year.