Food for Thought

I like reading about food. Not the recipe book kind, but accounts of food and drink written in a broader setting. Such as a character in a novel (Perry Mason always had steak with lavish amounts of butter during his courtroom lunch breaks) , or in passing (hardship travelers eating whatever they can lay their hands on), or in a thematic takeoff (exploring a character's state of mind through the food she eats), or in any other setting where the description of food is unusual or unexpected. When reading such accounts, sometimes I want to experience what the characters are experiencing, taste what they are tasting. At other times, I am totally turned off, never wanting to smell or taste that kind of food again. At times, I am both attracted and repelled, and sometimes, just plain nauseated.

In his collection of travel essays, The Bird Man and the Lap Dancer, Eric Hansen writes of Cooking with Madame Zoya. During the second world war, Zoya is a nurse in a Moscow army hospital which is captured by the Germans, and she is taken to a prisoner of war camp near Munich. After the war she moves to the US, gets married, and moves to an apartment on West 139th street in Manhattan. Hansen develops an unusual friendship with the elderly Madame Zoya, and visits her every month.

She teaches him to how make Russian dishes, and they drink vodka in preparation and to see the food on its way. "...pieces of prepared salted hairink", "...blini...served them with melted butter, sour cream, caviar and a light sprinkling of fresh chives", "...coulibiac (salmon baked with dill, chopped hard-boiled eggs, parsley and kasha in a flaky pastry dough), kotletki and bitotehki (chicken and meat cutlets), baklazhannia ikra (puree of eggplant), and vareneki and pelmini (two types of Russian ravioli)", "...pashka, which is a type of type of moist cheesecake with fruit, eggs and vanilla". I have never had Russian food like this before, and when I read this, I started looking for nearby Russian restaurants.

Reports of delectable foreign food is exciting, that of outlandish domestic food is intriguing. The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2002 is still my most favorite in the "Best American" series, fronted by Burkhard Bilger's Braised Shank of Free-Range Possum. Mr. Bilger travels the south in search of old-world delicacies such as the free-range possum of the title ("...that feral, faintly glandular presence rising through the sauce", turtle soup ("...a mixture of brine and fern and slumbering beast"), frog legs ("Tender and buttery, with a subtle, amphibian chew") and other intriguing meats. I keep going back to this essay for its outrageous charm, although I am not sure I want to follow in Mr. Bilger's footsteps.

A bit of bite adds a lot of zest. Here's Paul Theroux writing in My Other Life. "...And in addition zere are fresh lobsters zis ivneen. Zay are not on ze meenue." "'Not real lobsters,' Lady Max said, shivering as though insulted by the word. 'They're just these pathetic little discolored crayfish from Scotland." Later, in the same book. "'Wine then. A red - cabernet.'... I poured him a Beaujolais, defying him to object." Following which, another character. "Then Burgess became preoccupied - finished his whiskey, spooned chopped banana, murmured the word 'sambals', and he did not look up as his hand moved crabwise towards his wine glass and his fingers found its stem and hoisted it."

And sometimes, the food - the eating and vomiting of it - can be insidiously gut-wrenching. As in James Hall writing about The Vomiting Game. (Appearing in The Road Within, a collection of travelers' tales.) "The blade emerged when I arrived. My lips touched hot, pungent goat hair. A jet of blood shot out.... I closed my eyes and tasted hot, salty liquid." Then, a few minutes later, "...the sensation propelled me forward, over the ditch. A rush came, then another huge one. Goat's blood poured out of me. Above the women ululated in celebration. The pitch of the people's shouting rose sharply in reaction. I let go again. Blood and medicine. More cheers."

Yesterday, I saw that deer family again. The two little polka-dotted innocents looked delicious. And I imagined how they must appear to a hungry lion.

Good enough to eat?