High Peaks of European Cuisine

 

     Growing up in a Midwestern suburb during the Eisenhower era, I came to feel that I lived in a cultural desert.  Not realizing then that everyone’s own culture tends to be invisible to the individual, I thought not only Chicago’s nearby Black neighborhoods, but also small Midwestern towns, not to mention every other country on earth, had more to engage the imagination than the trimmed lawns of my neighborhood where the height of aesthetic ambition seemed embodied in my parents’ artificial Christmas tree situated in the picture window and played upon by varicolored lights as it revolved.  The corresponding cuisine notoriously depended on ketchup, margarine, Wonder Bread, Jell-O salads, and casseroles using canned soups.  On the rare occasions that my family dined out, it was either for burgers or, for a fancy meal, steak or fried chicken.

     But I soon learned that other options existed and, in menus as in other matters, I became a dissenter.  My mother learned early that I preferred Oscar Mayer Smokey Links to hot dogs and Liederkranz to Velveeta and, as I reached high school age, I found access to lamb and eggplant from Diana’s on South Halsted, sausage with mumbo sauce from a stand beneath the 63^rd Street El, and pickled cabbage from the Assyrian-American Restaurant.  Now, of course, ethnic holes-in-the-wall are everyone’s favorites and salsa is America’s most popular condiment.  A combination of world travels and stacks of library cookbooks have given me some familiarity with what is done with food today.  I have learned that no other region produces such a grand variety of pickled foods as the Korean banchan, while Indian cooking excels in the harmonious orchestration of large numbers of aromatic herbs and spices.  At the same time, I came to reconsider white people’s food and to realize that the European continent has dramatically high peaks of its own culinary achievement.  Though I took a long way round, I had come to be able to appreciate the unique triumphs of white people’s cooking.    

     Bread is made in a good many parts of the world, but European wheat breads have been developed to a level of sophistication far outpacing other regions.  Most of the world’s breads are unleavened flatbreads like tortillas or chapattis, sometimes, like Ethiopian injera, fermented.  In the nineteenth century the first satisfactory chemical leavens became available, allowing the cook to make raised breads like biscuits, soda bread, coffee cake, and bannocks.  Oven-baked raised breads using barm, yeast, or sourdough starters include naan, Khamiri roti, and Arabic khubz, including pita, but in Europe an array of high-rising yeast breads unlike those known elsewhere arose.  Every region of Europe developed specialties: pain de mie, challah, pan gellego, ciabatta, pane Toscano, but the acknowledged masterpiece of European bread is the French baguette.  Countless excellent breads are made with whole wheat or with multiple grains, and I relish a sprinkling of sunflower, flax, and sesame seeds, yet for me as for most diners and bakers the acme of bread, the very best loaf, is a baguette.  (Baking all my life I continue to pursue the perfect baguette in my own kitchen.)  The contrast in texture between crust and interior and the pure and fresh wheaten taste, bland enough to complement any dinner made this the most common and iconic of French foodstuffs.  The very magic of the action of the yeast, creating bubbles and caverns, makes a light and variable loaf that is excellent with unsalted butter while not distracting from the other contents of a full plate.    

     People throughout the world, in the universal quest for intoxication, have made alcoholic drinks of whatever was hand: using the sap of palms to make wine in West Africa, agave for pulque in Mexico, rice for sake and mijiu in East Asia, even mare’s milk for Mongolian ayrag or kumis.  Each of these has its charms, particularly in its home territory with complementary climate and cuisine, yet the production of wine from grapes in Europe goes far beyond what was done elsewhere.  Surely the range is extraordinary from a dry and fine-bubbled sparkler, through the light fruit of Beaujolais, the grave and knotty flavor of pinot noir, the satin of Bordeaux, the musky hearth-like warmth of port, even the strong straw taste that lurks behind the sweetness of Tokay.  Surely for those who consume alcohol there is a wine for every taste and every moment.  The simple treatment of grape juice to preserve it and at the same time to induce inebriation became in Europe an elaborate aesthetic game, as any glance at wine literature will indicate, but one with resulting in dependable satisfaction.  

     Similarly, the cheese produced in Europe is far more varied than most of the world’s cheeses.  While fresh cheeses like the Indian panir or the Middle Eastern ackawi which are widespread are made also in  Europe: the familiar cottage cheese, German quark, and French fromage blanc.  The most distinctive European cheeses are, however, prepared with particular molds, fungi, and bacteria.  The litany of their names might suggest a cheese cantata: Brevibacterium linens is used in making Limburger, Penicillium glaucum for gorgonzola, Propionibacterium freundenreichii makes the holes in Swiss, and Penicillium camemberti and its cousin Penicillium roqueforti for camembert and roquefort.  The flavors may be mild or sharp, bland or salty, perhaps nutty or smoky, the textures light or dense soft or hard, smooth or grainy, a grand array of possibilities unequaled elsewhere in the globe. 

     Many foodstuffs are most appealing in natural form.  Fresh apricots can scarcely be improved, new peas and a beefsteak need only a bit of cooking and seasoning, while oysters and clams are best utterly au naturel.  The satisfaction of fresh milk, salted peanuts, tomatoes just plucked from the garden, and countless other foods is universal.  Cuisines differentiate, however, when more complex preparation is employed, often resulting in a product that could not really be foreseen in its raw materials.  Bread, wine, and cheese are all the result of fermentation, and the astonishing variety of each of these basic foods is a testament to our species’ ingenuity, demonstrating the power of art to transform nature.  These products are not simply foods; they are feats of imaginative and aesthetic judgement.

     They are, we may be glad, artistic creations with physical substance.  I sit this afternoon on my front porch in a soft breeze, hearing the birds of late summer.  With a piece of baguette, some thin slices of Gouda, and a glass of Chateau Garreau, I may partake of these pinnacles of European cuisine all at once and, to enjoy such a feast, one need not do any preparation whatever, though today’s bread is homemade.