My friend Carolyn tells a charming story about the first time she tasted wine. When she was a young girl her parents would send her to her grandparent's home in Paris every summer. As part of the ritual her grandfather would take a small glass and pour in some wine and mix it with a bit of water. Every meal she drank her petit vin unbeknownst to her parents back in the UK. Carolyn's life has had the panache of being unAmerican and therefore more intriguing and fanciful then my middle class American upbringing.
My first taste of wine was far less intriguing. My parents were not part of the swinging cocktail crowd, although , sometimes I wished when I was younger that they were.They received as a company gift at Christmas time the obligatory bottle of scotch that would go untouched for years. New Years was occasionally toasted with something caled cold duck or Asti Spumante. The wine they would drink was California Chablis. My parents did not travel abroad. My mther feared flying. They did not throw dinner parties and offer mixed drinks while wearing glamorous clothes. In other words, my parents were not the parents of friends who did have parties and played music on the hi-fi while sipping drinks and smoking cigarettes. My parents were straight arrows, purposeful and focused, conscientous and decent.
Drinking a glass of chablis was a big deal for them. The fancy stemmed wine glasses were taken off the top shelf in the kitchen cabinet where they were stored. The evening always started with a shower by my Mother emerging damp and dewy and dabbed with Chanel no.5. The wine was poured and looked to me like refined grapefruit juice, clear pale yellowish pink. I always begged a sip. I was never denied because the evening could only heat up if Lorinda and her brothers were sent to bed.
As a teenager I attended a local prep school, Fryeburg Academy. The students at this school were from around the world but the lambrusco we drank was hardly the penultimate of refinement.The lambrusco was thick and grapey-sweet like an alcoholic Welch's grape juice. We would swig from a communal bottle, staining our teeth and lips. Afterwards we would try to conceal the heavy alcoholic perfume with lots of Bonnie Bell strawberry flavored lip gloss and Wrigley's spearmint gum. Oddly enough I never remember being hung over. Of course, five swigs were enough to make me feel inebriated.
As a young adult, wine was trendy as an aperitif to quaff the thirst and loosen shy tongues at parties. Socially, it put me at ease to order "chardonnay, please" and to hold that stemmed glass as I struggled to define myself as an adult. Sipping wine and became step in the social dance. It was an accoutrement to a social life not a culinary refinement or pleasure.
Drinking fine wine began when my exhusband and I would take trips with friends from graduate school into the Virginia countryside. Tim and Anne, and Evan and I, found small wineries in Virginia, Western Massachusetts and Upstate New York and sipped our way through them all. I recall one weekend in the Blue Ridge mountains where we gorged ourselves on different presentations of smoked trout paired with local wines. The fish was so sweet and the wine piquant. It was a culinary epiphany. We took to bringing a good bottle of wine when we hiked the White Mountains with these same friends. Under moonlit skies, with bone weariness we would lean back sipping wine, feet warmed by the camp fire as our shoulders and far edges were cooled by the cool mountain air.
My introduction to french rose came when I stayed with a friend on the Cap D'Antibes in the south of France. Sitting on the lovely little terrace overlooking the Mediterranean my friend Beverly would serve meals straight from the market in Nice. It might be a little cheese with crusty bread, a bowl of olives and freshly dressed greens or a luscious fresh tomatoes with fresh mozzarella and basil or a slice of charentais melon served with a glass of chilled rose. She was not an accomplished chef but she knew how to eat well. I have never been more relaxed or at ease as I was during that time. The worries of home and future felt far behind me. I still think of this friend whenever I have a glass of rose. I always say a private thank you to her, grateful for that trip and the experience.
Now during the summer I drink Prosecco. When white peaches are ripe I slice the tender pink striped flesh into my wine glass and eat them with an Italian demitasse spoon. I do not treat wine with any pretensions. I allow myself the full experience of taste and sensation, after all, part of the pleasure is the disinhibition and relaxation it offers. So when a day has been stressful, a glass of cabernet and plate of left over pot roast, sitting with my feet up, newspaper in my lap and a remote in hand scanning the news, is just the remedy for forgetting the strife.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Radishes 2/2007
In the poor soil by the foundation was a garden. This garden had a border between the dusty soil and the tufts of stiff grass made of oversized round rocks. For part of the day this garden was overshadowed by a mock orange shrub. The reddish soil was the product of shale and leftover from the time the cellar for the house had been dug. When watered, this parched pitiful plot was dry within a half hour under the hot summer sun. Its location was on the far corner facing the back yard. This was my garden. I was six years old.
My garden grew Four O'clocks and radishes. The flowers were multicolored with fine contrasting lines like the crazed surface of old paint. When they were finished blooming, they curled up like old wads of wet tissue. The radishes had hairy leaves that made the tops of your hands itch if you rubbed up against them. These were coarse and ugly leaves.
Rarely, did my radishes grow to resemble anything like the beautiful rosy globes you see in the market. These were long and narrow, a skinny root anchored to a leafy top. If they did grow a tuber, it was usually riddled with brown rimmed holes created by microscopic white wroms. I sometimes salvaged these nasty orbs by cutting away the bad bits with a butter knife just to claim I could eat them. These were radishes as hot and bitter as horseradish. These were radishes that set your mouth on fire.
As a child I was obssessed with books that had passgaes of food descriptions. I wanted to be Francis the Badger with bread and jam and hard boiled eggs taken to school with special salt shakers. I read and reread passages of Laur Ingall Wilder's apple pies. I imagined myself at every meal I ever read about. In my tome on French cooking, I read about radish and butter tea sandwiches. I grew radishes to eat tea sandwiches. This was my inspiration and the sole reason my garden would have no vegetable. I thought radishes had panache.
As a child my mother would sliced fresh radishes into salads or would serve them sliced in a bowl with cider vinegar and salt and pepper. I suspect radishes and vinegar were something from my mother's childhood in Maine. It is a homely and quick condiment you might find at a bean supper in a local grange hall. It was farmers' food, a quick pickle.
But I was no farm girl and my garden was in a post world war II housing development in suburban Connecticut. I longed for what my six year old sensibilities thought was sophistication. I wanted that loaf of white bread with a fine crumble sliced thinly, spread with sweet butter and sprinkled with sea salt. This desire represented a simple pleasure beyond satisfying basic hunger.
In college I discovered another type of radish, huge white radishes sliced into stews by vegan and macrobiotic friends. Unlovely boiled lumps that tasted like dirt. The taste of overcooked skunk root could only be washed away with a bottle of wine.
When I discovered Korean food I realized other cultures pickled radishes too, like Maine farmers. I began to understand that radishes in farming cultures are used like seasoning, adding a layer of flavor to meals.
Still I prefer the french method of eating a radish. The contrast of hot and sweet , salty and savory appeals to my sensibilites. It symbolizes my approach to life of wanting to experience it fully, bitter and happy, passionate and humble.
My garden grew Four O'clocks and radishes. The flowers were multicolored with fine contrasting lines like the crazed surface of old paint. When they were finished blooming, they curled up like old wads of wet tissue. The radishes had hairy leaves that made the tops of your hands itch if you rubbed up against them. These were coarse and ugly leaves.
Rarely, did my radishes grow to resemble anything like the beautiful rosy globes you see in the market. These were long and narrow, a skinny root anchored to a leafy top. If they did grow a tuber, it was usually riddled with brown rimmed holes created by microscopic white wroms. I sometimes salvaged these nasty orbs by cutting away the bad bits with a butter knife just to claim I could eat them. These were radishes as hot and bitter as horseradish. These were radishes that set your mouth on fire.
As a child I was obssessed with books that had passgaes of food descriptions. I wanted to be Francis the Badger with bread and jam and hard boiled eggs taken to school with special salt shakers. I read and reread passages of Laur Ingall Wilder's apple pies. I imagined myself at every meal I ever read about. In my tome on French cooking, I read about radish and butter tea sandwiches. I grew radishes to eat tea sandwiches. This was my inspiration and the sole reason my garden would have no vegetable. I thought radishes had panache.
As a child my mother would sliced fresh radishes into salads or would serve them sliced in a bowl with cider vinegar and salt and pepper. I suspect radishes and vinegar were something from my mother's childhood in Maine. It is a homely and quick condiment you might find at a bean supper in a local grange hall. It was farmers' food, a quick pickle.
But I was no farm girl and my garden was in a post world war II housing development in suburban Connecticut. I longed for what my six year old sensibilities thought was sophistication. I wanted that loaf of white bread with a fine crumble sliced thinly, spread with sweet butter and sprinkled with sea salt. This desire represented a simple pleasure beyond satisfying basic hunger.
In college I discovered another type of radish, huge white radishes sliced into stews by vegan and macrobiotic friends. Unlovely boiled lumps that tasted like dirt. The taste of overcooked skunk root could only be washed away with a bottle of wine.
When I discovered Korean food I realized other cultures pickled radishes too, like Maine farmers. I began to understand that radishes in farming cultures are used like seasoning, adding a layer of flavor to meals.
Still I prefer the french method of eating a radish. The contrast of hot and sweet , salty and savory appeals to my sensibilites. It symbolizes my approach to life of wanting to experience it fully, bitter and happy, passionate and humble.
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