Wednesday, October 09, 2002

On the subject of why food writing is so very tricky, I’ve been doing some thinking, and my current theory is that food is just so essentially a good thing.  Although, or even because, it’s one of the vital needs in life, there just aren’t too many ways to feel about great food – sitting down to a meal is just a plain simple happy thing, and that is boring.  Being a food writer is like spending your life writing about Melanie Wilkes, or Jesus, or something.  The food is simple – it’s people who make things difficult. I guess sex is sort of like that too.  Now that I think about it, the whole thought is sort of inane.  But I’ll leave it here as testament to my ongoing, lumbering stupidity when it comes to all things vaguely philosophical. Last night I made Coquilles St. Jacques a la Parisienne, Scallops and Mushrooms in White Wine Sauce.  I bought my scallops at Jefferson Market.  I was hoping that they would give me the empty scallop shells Julia suggests I serve the scallops in for free, so I could then come home and give them the whole-hearted plug I want so to give them, but no dice with the shells.  I don’t think Jefferson Market cleans their own scallops.  I wonder if anyone does – I guess in Chinatown, maybe.  Anyway, it’s still a good store, although that evening everyone was being very pushy and grumpy – not the staff, the customers.  In fact, everywhere I went in the Village that day, people were being obnoxious.  I guess it’s just 5:30 in a crowded, upper-middle class neighborhood in New York. But I was in a pretty good mood.  I’d gotten off work at a decent hour – the office is quiet this week, too quiet.  I got home well before seven, even with the shopping.  I should say I got to my front door well before seven.  Problem was, I’ve been having this problem with my keys, namely that I’ve lost them, and Eric and Jordan weren’t at home, so I had to stand outside for a good long time.  Which was fine, because I happen to be in the middle of a really fantastic book -- Blood of Victory, by Alan Furst, I would link to it but my computer's a piece of shit.  But my ice cream was melting and my scallops just sitting there.  And one of the amenities Long Island City lacks is a coffee shop, or a bar, or anyplace I can wait when I lose my keys other than a sidewalk alongside a road choked with freight trucks and the occasional cruising guy who has to slow down when he passes me, because I don’t look particularly like a hooker, but he never can tell, can he? I’ve never cooked scallops before, or even eaten then more than once or twice.  But I like scallops – they appeal to me aesthetically.  They’re so neat; small white cylinders, perfectly smooth.  They remind me of ice cream sandwiches, such satisfying little dessert packets with their perfect brown wafers, the pin points with the white ice cream showing through. I started by simmering some vermouth with scallops and bay, then adding the scallops, sliced mushrooms (sorry, Lulu), and water to cover.  Actually, I was a little slow on the uptake with adding the water.  I was distracted by the stupide shite on the TV, average Americans talking about the president’s quote-unquote speech on Iraq.  I know I’m probably preaching to the converted on this here blog, and I for Christ’s sake don’t want to get into politics, but is it not just excruciatingly embarrassing to have such a dipshit idiot for a president?  Ah well.  Anyway, upshot being, I was a tad slow with the scallops, I think I over cooked them a bit.  When I took them out of their cooking liquid, they’d gotten some little cracks in them, and didn’t look white so neat and snowy white.  I boiled down the cooking liquid, then made a sauce parisienne – made a white roux of flour and butter, off heat beat in the cooking liquid and milk, boiled that one minute, then beat the sauce into a mixture of beaten egg yolk and cream, by “driblets,” as JC calls them. I should say that this is what I was doing in theory.  In actuality, I was still being distracted, because now Buffy had started.  God, how I hate television.  How I love Buffy.  My life  -- tragedy on a different scale. Upshot being that my sauce parisienne probably wasn’t the classic delicate thing it’s meant to be.  I like to think of it as the Cajun version – browner, more down to earth.  Though I did go ahead and strain it, like JC says, which probably was for the best – got some of the burned bits out of there.  I returned this to the pan and boiled it some more, stirring, adding cream to thin, and salt, pepper, and lemon juice. The scallops I sliced crosswise.  They looked okay on the inside, not too overdone, I don’t think.  Though on the other hand how would I know?  Then I tossed the scallop slices and the mushrooms with two-thirds of the sauce parissiene, and spoon it into three little white ceramic dishes I bought at some point in my life to serve pots de crème or some damn thing in – why did I buy only three dishes?  Don’t ask, I don’t know – I’m sure it made sense to me at the time.  The remaining scallops I dished out into some little pyrex mise en place dishes my aunt had given me a few years back, and which are supremely useful things.  I spooned more sauce over the scallops and mushrooms, then sprinkled on some cheese and ran the dishes under the broiler.  Mmm, brown cheese.  I put a dish on each of our plates, and some salad out of a bag.  The bread, which was bought at Jefferson Market, too, at the end of the day, and which was kind of tough and stale, we tore bits off of, straight out of its paper bag.  Scallops are really, surprisingly, sweet.  Very sweet – I suppose the vermouth added to that.  The cheese, my husband pointed out, seemed a little too much for them – it became this thick, almost rubbery layer over the much more delicate, creamy stuff beneath.  He was right on the money with that, and I was shocked, because Eric doesn’t much go for moderation, culinarily speaking.  Brother Jordan pointed out that there was some grit in the scallops – that would be me not cleaning them sufficiently, or at all.  Thanks Jordan.  But it was a lovely little dish, and really very surprisingly simple to make – if it hadn’t been for Buffy and our inept president, it would have turned out perfectly.  And it was so cute, in it’s little porcelain dish.  Can you imagine if I’d serve it on a scallop shell?  That would have just been too twee for words, eh? Speaking of twee, take a look at this media bistro interview with Ruth Reichl.  Reichl drives me pretty crazy most of the time, but there’s some interesting tidbits amid the piles of horseshit here.  7:54:05 AM    comment []