Double-glazing, to speak candidly

10 February, 2012 – Changing trains on my way to Borough Market, there was, on the underground platform, a man about my height. Tucked under one arm he carried the latest edition of the London Review of Books as he flicked through Skye Gynnell’s A Year In My Kitchen. Doubly nourished, clearly, and heading to my destination. In my bag I kept my copy of each, and boarded a different carriage.

Rarely are we confronted with an image of ourselves. Someone occasionally has my coat, but that is the closest I usually come to glimpsing a reflection (unlike dyed-in-the-wool followers of fashion who must bristle and be perpetually piqued by accidental, unflattering imitation). When, over a year ago, I encountered the doppelganger I therefore thought it was a cue to write about something that was eating away at me: whether, if I were to happen to bump into The Unpalatable Truth, I would actually like it. I suspected that I wouldn’t. That it wouldn’t be to my taste.

That now seems to be a peculiar thing to think about your own writing (although part of me still suspects that there is a certain narcissism inherent to writing anything for the hell of it.)

At the time what I thought was called for was food that was literally, directly, reflective – a dish in which I could see my face, and then perhaps shatter it. And so, I realise, my response to fretting about narcissism would have been a chapter that would have been as narcissistic as it was pretentious.

There would have been a shoehorned association between the dish and the moment when, dethroned, Richard II breaks a mirror, a splintered self manifest; and more obtuse connections to the smithereens of Cubist painters and their fractured, multi-perspective portraits… There would have been a sweet surface, cracked. Creme brulee is what I had in mind.

I am glad that I didn’t take that course. I feel differently now. Bolder, perhaps. More sure of my tastes – without the need of a blast of a blowtorch, or to smash and pick up the pieces. More certain. Certain that were I to meet that chapter, I am sure I wouldn’t like it.

***

At a microscopic, split-second level we never truly see ourselves. We don’t even know that we are trying. Looking in a mirror the brain alternates between images supplied by both eyes, never quite snapping a photograph. As such, mirror image is a misnomer – at least when it comes to taking in our external selves.

In recent decades our understanding of the brain has been fragmented but is less inadequate (if not more complete) as a result. Psychology has started to shed cosy outer-layers of conceptualisation – dropping notions of single, unitary faculties in favour of multi-layered, multi-componential explanations for memory, attention and perception. How we think of emotions may undergo a similar change.

The prevailing view is that there are a small number of basic, discrete emotions that we all have and which we universally and effortlessly recognise in ourselves and in others. This may be intuitively appealing, but wrong. Emotional recognition could be akin to colour perception: just as red and blue have no external reality, but are categorisations that reflect the way we carve up the spectrum, emotions may be socially constructed labels too. We have no trouble identifying anger or sadness, but that doesn’t mean that those emotions exist as objective, precise and definable states.

To say that emotional perception may be similar to colour perception is to say that it might be rather more complicated. Taste was my starting point, yet I repeatedly return to sight. In part this is because much more is known about vision than the other senses and because vision research might provide clues for understanding the more ineffable senses – with the proviso that for vision too there is a great deal that remains a mystery.

Object recognition is one of the processes which is still largely baffling, including how the visual system determines relationships between features when identifying an object. As one neurologist says, “The question of how neurons encode meaning and evoke all the semantic associations of an object is the holy grail of neuroscience, whether you are studying memory, perception, art, or consciousness.” To which we might add perception of flavour.

For decades perception researchers drove up a blind alley, trying to figure out how the visual brain reconstructs a 3D representation of the outside world. It is thought now that at best the brain constructs a 2 and a half D model (3D would be an over-specification: you can have too much depth, too many layers, at least from an evolutionary point of view.)

And yet, it is easier to identify someone as colour-blind than taste-blind. Roses are red, violet is 380 nanometres, but quite what is a profiterole? Rods and cones are relatively well-understood; much less is known about taste and olfactory receptors. There are thousands of taste buds in the surface of the human tongue, but exactly how they work and what they respond to is far from fully understood, as underscored by the on-going dispute about how many sensors there are for each taste.

What flavour model might the brain construct, and do we have the language to approximate it? So woebegone are our descriptions that we borrow, badly, from other senses, even those senses which are themselves hardly any more muscular. (Hence the dreadful term ‘mouth-feel’. Although, in a sense, the one thing worse than mouth-feel is an absence of mouth-feel. Exhibit A: a skinny latte.) The equivalent of a 2 and a half D model for taste – a half-way dimension between fast food and haute cuisine? Or between the comforts of home-cooking and the wonders of molecular gastronomy? Your guess is as good as mine.

I gobble up the books, but it is clear that cognitive science can and will only take us so far, shall only provide a blinkered view of perception. For the felt experience of flavour, poets and food writers will survive as acknowledged legislators of taste.

Sensory experience, then, is a hall of mirrors, except that we – in our quest for essentials – are the ones who distort and refract. This suggests two paradoxical conclusions, or outlooks: a concave vision and a convex lens. One says, ‘expand, throw everything out’, the other narrows, hones in and brings necessary corrective focus.

Concavely. Our senses are fallible, our brains are loopy (I kid not, ‘loopiness’ is the technical term for nanosecond-by-nanosecond neural feedback). Best then that we realise ourselves through the eyes of others. We need a mirror image, a reflection of some sort and so must put ourselves out there, even if it feels narcissistic.

But, convexly, conversely, all we have is our own taste. At a molecular level, from the little that we do know about taste receptors, people differ greatly in their sensitivity to and liking for sweetness, sour tastes, the full range of delights. Some people can’t smell truffles (and while three and only three colour receptors is the norm, there are 15% of women who have a fourth and literally see the world differently.)

Remember the dinner party guests, then. Remember the reader. Worry about how you are perceived and pretension. Sure. But all a cook can do is hope that those he is feeding also like what he likes. And if they don’t? Well, there will be all the more for him.

*

In a time before 3G smart phones and blogs, Stendhal said that the novel was “a mirror that one walks down a road”. Not known for his uplifting recipes, Kafka thought that a book “must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul”. At which point, I think of reaching for my ice-axe to spike the chapter… Better cook instead.

Having ruled out creme brulee, but like Peter Pan in search of his shadow, I was still on stuck on a quest for reflection; but it wouldn’t be a harsh reflection. There should be a shimmer of sweetness, and rather than muddling my Greek myths – narcissism, gaze, turn to stone… – I turned to glaze instead.

I was in the middle of a rich series of chestnut meals. I had started out on dishes with vacuum-packed chestnuts but soon hit the finer stuff: chestnut flour, incorporated into doughs and cakes. Then, in the run up to Christmas, the local supermarket had string nets of sweet chestnuts and I make marrons glaces, glazed chestnuts.

First poaching the chestnuts. Beautiful dark brown skins, turning deep black. Burned fingers. Pealing back the plastic, leathery shells. Exposing hemispheres, a shrivelled cortex inside a membrane. Dried thoroughly then immersed in hot melted sugar, simmering until tender. Dried again while preparing another glaze. Skewering each chestnut and dunking, first in hot water, then in the syrup. Lastly, left to cool in the oven overnight.

Deciding that man can’t live off marrons glaces alone, I find a recipe which I had been meaning to make for years.

It too promises a glaze, and requires the juice of blood oranges, which I had already stocked. But before juicing, I must take strips off the orange, stretching dimpled skin, and scratch away the snowy, tangerine pith, then julienne. Not neatly. Why tidy into perfect oblongs, when I can have all the trimmings? I dunk the peel in the simmering sugar too, then leave to dry out with the chestnuts.

****

Once, I worried that others experience in technicolour, their exhilaration confirming that mine is world of dull grey. I see things differently now. I know that there are other ways to think and feel, and other perspectives on emotions and colours. (Perhaps also, with hindsight, I shouldn’t have been quite so blinkered to have elevated the taste of those who dress in Juicy Culture.)

*

Garish, vivid mousseline – or in fact a sauce maltaise crossed with mousseline. A hollandaise with whipped cream and the juice of blood orange. (Escoffier also calls for grated rind to be added but mine has been swiped.)

Mousseline will draw its light veil over, but not to mask, to celebrate; cloak and enjoy purple sprouting broccoli. Not to end the conversation, but to begin again. Ruminate and zealously communicate some more.

Small particles of one substance dispersed though the other. An emulsion. Two things which naturally repel and aren’t supposed to mix. An allusion, a collision, a mysterious collusion, that creates something rather wonderful, but which we know is ultimately unsustainable. Volatile particles suspended, normal laws of interaction up in the air. Stable for a short time before disintegrating. Make the most of it while it lasts.

Egg yolks whisked over a pan of simmering water. Keeping the butter just warm and, taking things slow, adding at a trickle. Running the risk of curdling and a heart-wrenching separation. (But, as ever, the kitchen provides the best solace. When a separation comes, it’s not always bad. It can be for the best: Milk is an emulsion too and the cream always rises to the top.)

Combining those fundamentally different, incompatible substances is hard work. All that mechanical, workman like effort to create something silky, smooth.

The proof is in the glaze. Apparently chefs always test their mousseline to make sure it glazes. Flashed under the grill, mine didn’t perform. The only glaze is the enamel of the gratin dish. That will learn me to try and be fancy.

But, pah! Glazing over, I decide is overrated, bad even. Certainly unbecoming for eyes. And rather, I give my total and dedicated attention to the sumptuous, glistening, mound of rangy broccoli tumbling off toasted sourdough.

***

After the emulsion, the perfect counterpoint. A combination. A batter, a coming together, not a temporary, unstable structure. Flour, milk and eggs – fellow travellers, uniting for a worthy cause. Crepes. Made with chestnut flour, sweet and earthy, powdery and fine, amalgamated with full fat milk, turning thick and gooey. A tiny teaspoon of sunflower oil and dram of Amangac, then left to rest and become elastic and limber.

But not just crepes. A pudding with depth. A pudding which I’d catch a glimpse of every once in a while, would catch it, finally, give it my brand: Mille crepes.

Nutty butter fizzles, then batter turned in the pan. A puther fills the kitchen and the stack grows. Each pancake more perfect than that last.

Another winsome combination for the filling. Ricotta churned with the spiky candid blood orange peel and some of the clear syrup speckled with vanilla seeds. Plus, having been beaten with the marble rolling pin, shattered glazed chestnuts.

Assembling this dissembling dish (it’s not quite one thousand crepes), I lay down a crepe, then smooth over the ricotta, add another crepe. My layers are wonky.

***

A little later I take from the fridge the crepes mille. It is deep and crisp and uneven.

I choose not to caramelize the top. No fireworks, no flame-thrower, no actorly emotions called for.

However a syrup to coat and wrap everything up will be a fine addition, so I juice more alizarin flesh from the remaining stripped blood oranges, then heat the juice gently and steep with a bashed sprig of rosemary and a little salt.

After melting the last of the chestnut poaching sugar again, enter the blood orange juice as Gorgon – the liquid fizzes and turns instantly to stone. More remedial warming through; patiently until the sugar is liquid caramel again, warm and ready to be poured over my piece of chilled crepes mille and vanilla ice cream.

There are ruffled layers, fossils of gleaming candied peel and glinting chestnuts tucked in there somewhere. The peel has a nip bitterness, a foil for the sweetness; the ricotta holding it all together beautifully and the depth of woody rosemary. Satisfying to bite, the crepes mille has, in the mouth, a certain, oh I don’t know what. I got through maybe a seventh of it. Must go a long run tomorrow.