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.