Talking Turkey

BuzzEditor — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:02:00 GMT

Let us consider the turkey, that curiously hyperbolic fowl that an uncommonly large number of us will be forced to consume tomorrow. Turkey is a creature that one either loves, or doesn't love, with only a very few left sitting on the proverbial fence. One of the greatest fan of the turkey was gastronome and chef Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, who wrote in his landmark volume The Physiology of Taste that:

"When the vine-grower or ploughman wants a treat on some long winter evening, what do we see roasting over a bright fire in the kitchen where the table is laid? A turkey. When the hard-working artisan invites a few friends to enjoy a holiday which is all the more precious for being rare, what is sure to be the principal dish of the feast? A turkey, stuffed with sausages or Lyons chestnuts. And in the high places of gastronomy, at those select gatherings where politics are forced to give way to dissertations on taste, what do the guests hope for and long for as the second course? A truffled turkey!"

Brillat-Savarin obviously liked his turkey. On the other hand, William Connor, who wrote under the named "Cassandra" in the London Daily Mirror back in the '50s, was not much of a fan of the bird at all. He wrote:

"The turkey has practically no taste except a dry fibrous flavour reminiscent of warmed-up plaster of Paris and horsehair. The texture is like wet sawdust and the whole vast feathered swindle has the piquancy of a boiled mattress."

Myself, I agree more with the Brit than the Frenchman. More often than not, it is a dry thing, eaten with untoward haste so that we might return as quickly as possible to watching the 27 millionth rerun of Miracle on 34th Street. The whole Thanksgiving meal is a true oddity, for it is not so much savored as it is inhaled – 12 hours of cooking devoured in 12 minutes at the table. Years ago, I suggested to some friends that our Thanksgiving feast be eaten in courses, rather than in one trip to the trough. They regarded me with the sort of shock that might have been appropriate had I suggested we do our dining in pink tutus.

Still, there's no denying the undeniable historical solidity of the turkey. Despite New Yorker scribe Calvin Trillin's argument that we should be eating spaghetti carbonara to honor Thanksgiving, rather than this large, unwieldy, notably dumb bird, turkey seems to be with us to stay. And, turkey is about as native as anything we eat.

The bird was first introduced to the Old World by any number of Spanish conquistadors – either Miguel de Passamonte, Francisco de Cordoba, or Hernando Cortes, all of whom sent turkeys back to Spain from Mexico – where it was known as the "Rooster of the Jesuits."

The Aztecs who raised the bird called it a "peru," which is odd, for turkeys are not found in Peru. But then, they're not found in India either, which didn't keep the French from calling them the "Bird of India" – d'Inde, which metamorphosed into the word "dinde," French for "turkey." Both the Germans and Dutch also thought that turkeys came from India, calling them Calecutische Hahn and Kalkoen respectively. It was the English, fuzzy as ever concerning geography, who named the bird the "turkey," in much the same spirit that they turned Jerez into "sherry."

If old Ben Franklin had had his way, the turkey would be the national bird today, instead of the eagle, and probably rightly so. Though of course, there's a good chance then that someone would try to instigate a constitutional amendment making it a federal crime to eat a turkey. And don't forget to eat yours with fenberry sauce and misickquatash – far more colorful names than the latterday monikers of cranberry sauce and succotash.

– Merrill Shindler

Breaking Bread With Its Preeminent Scholar

BuzzEditor — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 17:14:00 GMT

Steven Kaplan in France, where he investigated collective bread poisoning for his latest book

Photo: courtesy of Steven Kaplan

Good bread can be hard to find. At least it is if you've got the lofty standards of leading bread historian Steven Laurence Kaplan, who reveals that he tends to BYOB (bring your own bread) even at fancy restaurants. Kaplan, a Cornell professor, has written Good Bread Is Back and, more recently, Le Pain Maudit (Cursed Bread), about a collective bread poisoning that occurred in a small town near Avignon. He recently spoke at Breadbar in LA, and the Buzz caught up with him to glean further crumbs of knowledge. The man sure knows his baguettes, but the wonder is he knows his Wonder Bread as well.

ZB: The press release for your appearance at the Breadbar describes you as "the world's leading expert on French bread" and "the world's preeminent bread scholar." Not to be too irreverent – but are there others contending for those titles?

SK: Irreverence is an excellent posture for an interviewer. Let's call it skepticism, to be more elegant or neutral. I have worked with and on bread for 40 years. It is unlikely that there is anyone else on the planet – unless he or she lives in a cave or operates clandestinely – who has combined the practical experience in the bake-room with the infinite investment in archival research, who has articulated the practices of the artisan and the intellectual. Were you to query experts in France, I think they would concur with the Breadbar's ostensibly hyperbolic appreciation.

ZB: Did you grow up eating Wonder Bread?

SK: Yes, alas. Yuck. Powerful memories of the crystallization of a robust aversion.

ZB: Is Wonder Bread properly bread?

SK: To the extent that it incorporates flour, water, some salt and a fermenting agent, yes. To the extent that it combines all sorts of supplementary additives, technological auxiliaries, improvers, and myriad other chemicals, fortifiers, preservers, etc., and that it is manufactured in hyper-industrial conditions, to call it bread requires a magnanimous generosity of spirit.

ZB: What drew you to bread?

SK: On the sensual plane, the accident of an encounter in a Paris bakery the first day I set foot in Paris 45 years ago drew me to it. Intellectually, it was the search of a doctoral thesis "problem" or framing theme that touched on all aspects of the human experience from politics and social relations to economic growth and state construction; from religion and collective psychology to culture and agriculture, etc. The one nourished the other. The hedonic spurred the scholarly appetite. The two have operated in fruitful complement for many decades. I am convinced that truly exalting pleasure cannot be mindless. Even if one is not preoccupied with origins, influences and evolutions, bread must be good to think before it is good to eat, to paraphrase the great French anthropologist [Claude] Lévi-Strauss.

ZB: Do you nibble on bread the way others might smoke a cigarette?

SK: No. I respect bread too much to nibble on it mechanically or casually. Yet I cannot avoid tasting it and assessing it whenever I encounter it. When I buy a baguette, for example, if it is truly enthralling, I risk devouring half before I reach home.

ZB: Is there a hidden aesthetic to bread?

SK: Good bread is predicated on an aesthetic of rigor and truth that yields beauty and pleasure. It is anything but hidden. It is the mark or test of artisanal creation and realization.

ZB: If a meal without wine is like a day without sunshine, what is a meal without bread?

SK: A meal without bread is very much in the same idiomatic relation of necessity that your aphorism describes. It is more than a mere complement. It opens a whole organoleptic front. It enriches and delights.

ZB: Which restaurants have the best breads?

SK: You know, I have been spending much more time in France than in the U.S. over the past few years. Even in France, I often bring my own bread to fine restaurants. Restaurants there propose sumptuous dishes and engaging wine lists, but are often indifferent to or disdainful of bread. I take this as a personal affront. I try to shame them into obtaining better bread. Making bread is a separate craft from cooking, and is rarely done well by chefs – who are busy doing other things.

Beyond Breadbar, in the USA, I have never tasted acceptable restaurant bread.

ZB: Well, then, what are your favorite breads at LA's Breadbar?

SK: My favorite Breadbar breads are the baguette (Tour de France), the canonic measure of excellence in classical baking, and the sumptuous Millstone (or Tourte).

New York City : Shindler's Dish

Talking Turkey

– Merrill Shindler

Breaking Bread With Its Preeminent Scholar

Steven Kaplan in France, where he investigated collective bread poisoning for his latest book

Photo: courtesy of Steven Kaplan

– Merrill Shindler