Steal the Menu: A Memoir of Forty Years in Food
By Raymond
Sokolov
242 pages,
Knopf, 2013
Instantly drawn
to this book because of its title, I knew nothing about its author. Turning to
the cover flap for enlightenment, I saw that he had been food editor of The New York Times in the seventies, and
therefore I expected a behind-the-scenes look at food journalism and restaurant
reviewing in one of the world’s greatest newspapers.
My expectations
were all wrong. But Steal the Menu was still an instructive, interesting
read, written by an extremely erudite man who has spent most of his life
involved with food in one way or another.
The reason the
book was not what I expected is that Sokolov only stayed at The New York Times for a couple of
years, and from what he writes did not particularly enjoy his time there. So
while we do get to sneak a peek at how executive editor A.M. Rosenthal ran his
paper, and how Sokolov tried to navigate and modify the Times’ restaurant review format and editorial line (most entertainingly when he demonstrated that the wedding cake recipe for Nixon's daughter's wedding was littered with mistakes), we don’t get to
hang around very long.
But Sokolov wasn’t done with food, and went on to work as a freelance food specialist for several newspapers and magazines, most notably Natural History, and eventually reviewed restaurants for The Wall Street Journal. Even so, in this memoir he is much more concerned with tracking and explaining global food movements than with his specific gustatory experiences.
What is
interesting, and rather paradoxical about Sokolov is that, for a restaurant
critic, he seems remarkably uninterested in the actual sensory experience of
eating food. He readily acknowledges this:
“I tasted every one of those dishes with gusto and could still
give you a vivid account of the flavors and textures in many of them. But those
sensations – the ugly technical term for them is organoleptic – were not the
important ones. For me, they have never been of primary importance, except at
the time I was experiencing them. What mattered most was the dish, in all its
aspects.”
In other words, this is not a memoir that indulges
in describing the tart sweetness of raspberries on the tongue, or the pillowy
texture of a soufflé. In this manner, this is probably the most abstract food
memoir I have ever read. Sokolov is an intellectual in the most traditional
sense: he was on his way to obtaining a Harvard PhD in ancient Greek poetry
before getting sidetracked into journalism (he finally returned to school and
finished his PhD 38 years later). He views food through the same intellectual
lens through which he examines languages and literature. His work for Natural History, while still
food-centered, dipped into anthropology and botany. And his reflections on food
are most concerned with how food cultures form systems that were previously
believed to be unchanging, but evolved drastically during his lifetime.
Some people may
be turned off by this approach, and find Sokolov’s style dry, devoid of the
sensual joy that defines so much of food writing. But this book is important
precisely because it offers a different outlook on food, while still conveying
what it was like to live through several crucial changes in culinary history,
such as the advent of nouvelle cuisine.
We all think we
know what nouvelle cuisine is about: an emphasis on good ingredients, lighter
sauces, deconstructed plates… But in one of the most interesting passages in
the book, Sokolov debunks several early assumptions about nouvelle cuisine,
namely that it is diet-friendly, and instead defines it as a playful, almost
cerebral deconstruction of past food culture. He also pinpoints a crucial
change in restaurant practices: the passage from Russian-style dining, where
platters were brought tableside and dishes cut up and served onto individual
plates at that moment, to the style that is now the norm in most high-end
Western restaurants, where individual plates are assembled in the kitchen. It
is something we take for granted today, but which has had huge repercussions on
restaurant cooking and organization.
So while you
may miss the proliferation of adjectives and the evocations of swirls of cream
and pungent spices, you may nevertheless find yourself enjoying and benefiting
from Sokolov’s unique perspective on the changes food culture underwent in his
lifetime. You probably won’t come out with that happy, sated feeling you get
when you finish a really lush, feast-laden food book, but you will come out
feeling that you learned something in a pleasant way.
There are many
dishes mentioned in this book, from French classics to molecular innovations. I
happened to be travelling to Belgium
right after taking notes on Steal the
Menu, so I decided to make a traditional dish I make it a point to eat
every time we go there, because its main ingredient is not available in North America : sole
meunière.
You can technically
prepare any white fish à la meunière
(“in the manner of the miller’s wife”), dredged in seasoned flour and sautéed
in butter, then served with lemon. But the soles found on this side of the Atlantic are really not ideal for it: they fall apart the
second they are cooked. So whenever I need a quick fish dinner fix, I opt for
haddock or tilapia (although the latter is just as easily served Hanoi-style Dover
Sokolov writes
that sole meunière can be prepared with boned filets, but I have always been
served whole cooked fish that I had to debone myself, even in restaurants. It
was part of the ritual of the dish; I remember how proud I was the year I was
finally old enough to debone the fish myself without making a mess of things or
having to ask my parents to do it for me. First you scraped away the tiny
little bones at the edges of the fish. Then you carved down the middle of the
fish lengthwise, until you met bone, and you carefully lifted first one filet,
then another. If you were my father, you then flipped the entire fish over and
lifted the other two filets and discarded the bones before eating. If you were
like me, you ate each filet before lifting the next. Either way, it was
delicious, the nuttiness of the browned butter perfectly complementing the
taste of the fish, the lemon balancing out the richness. If you are perplexed
at how such a simple dish has remained a popular classic throughout the decades,
it means you haven’t had it done right.
Sole meunière
Serves 2
2 whole Dover
Salt and pepper
for seasoning
Flour for
dredging
4 tbsp butter
Lemon wedges
Season the
soles on each side with salt and pepper. Dredge them in flour.
Melt the butter
in a skillet over medium-high heat, until it is foaming. Quickly sear the soles
until they are nicely browned on each side, flipping them over once.
Serve
immediately with lemon wedges. To debone, first scrape away the little bones at
the edges, then cut down lengthwise until you meet bone and lift one filet,
then another. Flip the fish over and repeat this last step.
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