Saturday, November 22, 2014

The Telling Room - Salted Almonds

The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World’s Greatest Piece of Cheese
By Michael Paterniti
368 pages, Random House, 2013


An entire book, and a rather longish one at that, revolving entirely around a single cheese? How could I resist?

The Telling Room’s author, Michael Paterniti, may have started off writing this book as an outside observer, but the resulting book is a deeply personal one – and good thing, too, because I believe that is what ultimately saves the book.


Paterniti first reads about Pàramo de Guzmàn, the fabled Spanish cheese in the title, as a college student in the early nineties. Although he cannot afford to taste this wonder himself at the time, he is struck by the description of the cheese’s fabrication, a painstaking process filled with care and patience, led by a single old-fashioned cheesemaker in a tiny village in the Spanish region of Castile. The projected purity of the finished product makes a lasting impression on the author.

Decades later, Paterniti finds himself tracking down this cheesemaker, Ambrosio Molinos, travelling all the way to Guzmàn (the village the cheese is named for) to meet with him and hear his story. Ambrosio, who is by then no longer involved in the cheesemaking business, reveals himself to be a boisterous, theatrical character, a born storyteller who so impresses Paterniti that the latter returns to Castile several times over the following decade, even moving to Guzmàn for a year with his young family.

Ambrosio is described as a force of nature, strong in both body and spirit. He could also act as spokesperson for the slow food movement. He continually advocates eating real, local food, food that has been prepared with care by people who have a personal investment in its quality. He is part of a vanishing culture that is a large part of the reason the author falls in love with Castile and Guzmàn: a culture of tradition, of simplicity, of taking one’s time.


Had The Telling Room been solely an ode to Ambrosio and his cheese, I really believe I would have disliked it. But perhaps that has more to do with my character than with the book itself. I am, no matter how you look at it, an irretrievable urbanite. I can appreciate the beauty of the mountains and the calm of the desert – but I don’t necessarily want to live there. I am, overall, an introvert who stays in a lot, but I do like the options the city offers, the buzzing activity of the crowd outside my window. So an entire book praising the simple life should not be my cup of tea. I’m also, frankly, pretty uptight. Constant theatrics and expansive diatribes such as those attributed to Ambrosio would wear me out in less than a day.

As a result, when Paterniti’s account of Ambrosio’s story, of how he started manufacturing Pàramo de Guzmàn as a homage to his father, how he nurtured the enterprise into a flourishing success, and how it all fell apart, appeared to be complete less than halfway through the book, I was both intrigued and afraid. How would the author fill the second half? What was the rest of the book going to be like? Was it all going to be pages and pages of the author gushing about the lost world of Guzmàn and mooning over Ambrosio’s lessons in the throes of his self-avowed man-crush?

Thankfully, no. Instead, the rest of the book explores the evolution of Paterniti’s friendship with Ambrosio, and his gradual realization that perhaps he has been blinded (or, as his wife puts it, emasculated) by his admiration of the former cheesemaker and the vision of Castile he represents. When he starts asking the right questions to the right people, Ambrosio’s tale of his cheese’s downfall, brought about, so he claims, by the betrayal of someone close to him, begins to appear, at the very least, exaggerated. Almost in parallel, the author realizes that his romanticized vision of Guzmàn is for him a welcome escape from his own reality. And so it is that The Telling Room, a book named after the room above the cellar where Castilians traditionally tell stories, unexpectedly becomes a complex reflection about myth, truth, culture, and storytelling. What is touching and quite admirable is that Paterniti manages to get through this reflection without losing any of his affection or admiration for Ambrosio.


Another reason this book manages to reach a surprising length given its extremely specific topic is that the author transmits cartloads of information about Castile, and other tidbits and anecdotes, in large part through massive footnotes. The footnotes can become a little exasperating, especially since I would have been more than happy to read most of this information woven into the narrative itself; but having to constantly jump from one section to another (I cannot leave a footnote unread) left me feeling scattered and ragged. Paterniti unabashedly pushes this tactic to the max in one infamous instance where he puts multiple footnotes into a footnote, then proceeds to adding other footnotes into those latter footnotes. At that point, you can either close the book, or, as I did, laugh at the absurdity and clear self-derision and just accept that this is the way the writer has decided to tell this story: rather like Ambrosio spins his tales, with multiple digressions and insertions.

In the end, I enjoyed my time in Guzmàn, as well as Paterniti’s sensitivity and research. The Telling Room is clearly a labour of love, and it presents itself as such. The love, it turns out, is contagious.


I hesitated as to what kind of food to prepare for this review. Something Spanish? Chorizo is often mentioned in the book, but it is, of course, homemade chorizo, which was not something I felt equipped to make. I seriously considered making my own cheese, as friends of mine have successfully done, but chickened out in the end, daunted by an irrational fear of rennet and the lack of space in my kitchen.

In the end, I singled out this passage in the book:

[Ambrosio] pointed to the almonds on the table before us. “These are almonds that are from the field here,” he said. “My father took the time with a hammer to deshell them, and later my mother preserved them by submerging them in salt water. Then, in an old pot, she heated a few drops of olive oil, added the almonds, and stirred with a spoon for a couple of hours – and this is the result.”

He handed me one. I slid it between my teeth, salt sprinkling my lip, the hard hull poised, then cracked by molars. Its flesh – the nut itself – was soft and gave, and the wood and mineral was instantly transformed into something very sweet, spreading to the far reaches of my mouth. “Mmmm,” I mumbled.

[…]

“But for me, it’s not special or unusual,” said Ambrosio. “The biggest satisfaction is to offer a wine from these fields or a little piece of cheese or some of these almonds from my mother. It’s another concept of life. It’s another way to plant your existence on this earth.” He pointed to the jar of almonds on the table. “That’s about six hours of work right there.”

“Six hours in that jar,” I said.

“Six hours by our hands,” said Ambrosio. “It sounds like a lot if you’re rushing, but in the context of life here, it’s nothing.”

Did I spend six hours preparing almonds? Hell, no. For one thing, finding almonds with the shell still on was impossible. But the idea that it is sometimes worth taking the time to do things slowly and properly is one I can, and do, get behind. Many of my favourite foods are slow in the making, like homemade bread and stews. I don’t have time to make them as often as I used to, but when I do, I do them right. So I tried to do these almonds right.

In the absence of a recipe, I had to do some guesswork. For instance, I was unclear as to whether the almonds described in the passage were peeled or not. I tried with both, and skinless blanched almonds were definitely better, as the salt infused them more thoroughly. I cooked them in a crock pot, over very low heat, for about an hour and a half, at which point they began to colour and I thought it best to stop.

The result didn’t really resemble the author’s description. There was no crunchy exterior, no hidden soft sweetness – just really good almonds, their woodsy flavour enhanced by the heat, salty throughout, with a hint of olive oil. Dead simple, and completely worth the time.


Salted almonds

Yields 2 cups

2 1/2 cups (625 ml) water
2 tbsp salt
2 cups (500 ml) blanched unsalted almonds
1 tbsp olive oil

In a medium glass or ceramic bowl, combine the water and salt, and stir to dissolve. Add the almonds (if necessary, add water to cover). Soak at room temperature for at least 24 hours.

Drain the almonds and pat dry. Heat a heavy-bottomed pot over very low heat and add the olive oil. Cook the almonds, stirring occasionally, until they are golden brown. Store almonds in an airtight container at room temperature.


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