The Man Who Ate Everything (52 page)

For weeks I had been preoccupied with horses. Every time I saw a horse dragging tourists across the snow in Central Park, or standing under a policeman on the cobblestones of SoHo, I began to salivate. In truth, it was the fat of the horses, the fat around their kidneys, that excited me.

It had all started several months before, when a friend in Paris telephoned to announce that Alain Passard, chef of the famed Michelin two-star restaurant L’Arpege in the Seventh Arrondissement, cooks his French fries only in horse fat. “They have a not-disagreeable horsey flavor,” he told my friend Frederick Crasser, a prodigious cook and food writer, “a lightness and a true crispness you cannot obtain with other fats and oils.”

Lightness, crispness, savory flavor—the words instantly put my appetite on alert. Isn’t it a miracle, I reflected, that French-fry lovers the world over—which includes nearly everybody the world over—share the same standards for greatness in fries? I noticed this again when reading a manual for French-fry professionals. Crispness, a golden-brown color, tenderness (instead of toughness), a fine fried flavor, lightness (instead of a soggy interior), and absence of greasiness—these seem to be cultural universals, like the fear of snakes.

Only texture gives rise to argument. Americans look for a dry, granular, “mealy” interior, and so they usually choose high-starch, dense Idaho russets. Europeans prefer a moister, smoother texture, which comes from a “waxier” tuber of lower density and starch content—but not as waxy as the small, yellow-fleshed
rattes,
fingerlings, and new potato varieties they generally use for mashed potatoes. In America, this would describe the BelRus, Centennial Russet, Chieftain, Katahdin, La Rouge, Sangre, Sebago. All but the Katahdin are difficult to find in American supermarkets, where six starchy varieties command 80 percent of the business. Unless your nearest farmer’s market sells yellow fingerlings or other boutique potatoes, you will have to settle for a round, white boiling potato from the supermarket if you are not particular about flavor and want to go in the waxy direction.

Frederick went on to explain that Alain Passard’s preferred potato is the Charlotte de Bretagne (whose mealiness or waxiness I have not yet ascertained). He cuts it into the
pommes Pont-Neuf
shape—classic French fries about one centimeter square and eight centimeters long, or three-eighths inch by three inches. He uses a kitchen knife, not a French-fry cutter or food processor, because this produces a slight irregularity in the fries. Passard poaches the potato strips in rendered horse fat, a clear and golden liquid, kept at a relatively cool 265 degrees Fahrenheit, for ten to twelve minutes; drains the potatoes; waits six minutes; and immerses them again in the horse fat, this time raised to 365 degrees Fahrenheit for the two or three minutes needed to make them crisp, golden brown, and a little puffy.

Frederick had barely hung up when a fresh sense of purpose and drive animated my spirit. Someday soon, I was sure, I would cook my own French fries in the fat of a horse. When and how this would be accomplished were questions that made the future seem alive with prospects and possibilities.

And then I was having a drink with Nora Pouillon, whose two restaurants in Washington, B.C. (Nora and Asia Nora), and fine new cookbook
(Cooking with Nora,
Park Lane Press) are nationally admired for both their food and their dedication to organic farming. Nora wanted to talk about sustainable agriculture, but her charming Austrian accent made it impossible for me to focus on anything but Lipizzaners, those fine, white Austrian Imperial equines. Nora was soon to leave for Vienna for a Christmas visit. Keenly aware that Austrians, while worshiping horses, also like to eat them, I tried to interest her in my French-fry mission.

When Nora began to reminisce guiltily about the fine Hungarian salami stuffed with donkey meat she had enjoyed as a girl, I knew I had her. I administered the coup de grace by telling her, in complete truthfulness, that an anthropologist has demonstrated that in those countries where horses are used for food, the animals are treated much more humanely after they are no longer fit for work. Within a few minutes she had agreed to bring back six pounds of horse fat—as long as it was legal. President Clinton is fond of her restaurant, and Nora would not risk embarrassing her commander in chief with the scandal of smuggled fat.

I had two weeks to prove that my plan complied with the law of the land. But the problem was this: ruthless radical Republican right-wing religious maniacs had shut down the U.S. government! At the best of times, it is exquisite torture to get a straight answer about food from the Customs Service. Now there was no one even to ask.

And then, as if by divine intervention, the federal government went back to work for a few days. Still, nobody in Washington had the courage to give me the go-ahead. The PDA would take charge only if the horses were wild, and sent me to the USDA, which thought the FDA was wrong. Then I reached one Richard Scott, who supervises the agricultural import inspectors and needs to make these decisions every day. He checked a manual of horse diseases, made sure that Nora’s fat was not from Argentina or Paraguay, performed further occult acts, and announced that if my horse fat had already been rendered and properly packed, she could carry it in without going directly to jail.

Now it was just a matter of time before fries cooked in horse fat would be mine.

My dedication to French fries is so profound that it undoubtedly has intrauterine origins, and for as long as I can remember, friends have telephoned me from the farthest reaches of civilization whenever they stumble across a particularly lofty French-fry achievement. Have I tried the fries at the little restaurant on the northwest corner of the Place des Vosges in Paris or at the new McDonald’s in Pushkin Square in Moscow? The Cafe de Bruxelles in Greenwich Village or Benita’s Frites in Santa Monica? Or the rotisserie near the Antibes market on the French Riviera, where crisp, golden chickens drip and dribble their juices upon the excellent fries piled in the bottom of the rotisserie for the few minutes that pass after they are fried and before they are sold?

Sometimes Fate puts the finest fries right under my nose. One summer we drove an hour into the hills overlooking the medieval walled city of Lucca, in Tuscany, to a tiny village called Pieve Santo Stefano and the restaurant called Vipore, the “Viper,” named two centuries ago for its fearsome owner, who successfully kept local bandits from preying on customers as they stopped at his inn to break the day’s long ride from Florence to Forte di Marmi on the Tyrrhenian Sea. We sat at wooden tables in a garden planted with flowers and herbs and black cabbages, watching the lights come on in Lucca and the stars come out overhead, and enjoyed the wonderful cooking of Cesare Casella, son of the owners, whose inventions include potatoes deep-fried with garlic and branches of fresh rosemary, thyme, oregano, sage, and
nepitella,
and served on paper made from straw. The herbs become crisp and perfume the oil, the garlic grows soft and mellow, the crunchy potatoes take on all their flavors, and they are wonderful. Tuscans are known for frying their potatoes with a little rosemary (I have read a scientific paper showing that rosemary is an antioxidant that retards rancidity in frying oil), but nobody uses herbs as expansively and skillfully as Cesare.

Somehow I left Pieve Santo Stefano without the recipe. Years later Cesare arrived in New York. Late one Sunday afternoon we shopped for ingredients, returned to my house, and within
m
inutes the smells and perfumes of Tuscany filled the kitchen. Only the
nepitella
was lacking, an herb indispensable in Tuscany, where it grows like a weed, but virtually unknown in this country, despite the plague of eating places calling themselves Tuscan. At Vipore, Cesare’s family makes a lunch of fried potatoes with a salad of green radicchio and sometimes a dish of eggs cooked with chopped fresh tomatoes. In Lucca, Cesare’s potatoes are called simply
patate frite,
but in America they become

Herbed Tuscan Fries

Gesare Casella

8 cups (approximately) peanut oil

l
^l
/2 pounds medium-large all-purpose or boiling potatoes

4 garlic cloves, unpeeled and lightly crushed

4 sprigs of fresh rosemary (each 6 to 8 inches long), cut in half

10 sprigs of fresh thyme

4 branches of fresh sage

2 sprigs of fresh oregano

2 teaspoons sea salt

Black pepper in a pepper mill

Special equipment:

9- to 10-inch pan for frying, with sides at least 4 inches high

Frying thermometer (one that covers the range between 200°
F
and 400°
F
E) Long cooking fork

Round skimmer about 5 inches in diameter

Fill the pan with 1
3/
4 inches of peanut oil and place over the highest heat on your most powerful burner. (Owners of commercial stoves should reduce the heat
by nearly half after the potatoes go in.) Immerse the thermometer in the oil. Wash and peel the potatoes and, with a French-fry cutter or a kitchen knife, cut them into long strips with a square cross section about 3/8 inch on a side. Do not wash the pieces but dry them carefully with a cloth and keep them tightly wrapped. Get the garlic and herbs ready.

When the oil reaches 360° F. to 370°
F
., add all the potatoes. Do not use a frying basket. Be careful not to splash the oil. The oil will bubble furiously and drop to between 240° F. and 270° F. before the temperature rises again. Stir continually with the long fork until the potatoes are done, in 10 to 12 minutes, adding the herbs and garlic as follows:

About 2 1/2 minutes into the frying, stir in the garlic cloves.

Six minutes into the frying, the potatoes should begin to take on a golden color, and the temperature should reach 280° F. to 300° F. Stir in the rosemary sprigs.

A minute or so later, stir in the thyme, sage, and oregano.

Nine minutes into the frying, sprinkle with the salt. (Yes, right into the potatoes and oil.) The potatoes should now be a deep golden color, and the oil temperature should have climbed to about 320° F.

A minute later, fish out a piece of potato with tongs or chopsticks, blot it on a paper towel, wait a few seconds, and take a bite. It should be crisp, and instead of bending, it should be stiff. The insides should be creamy, with no hint of a raw taste. You are not likely to need more than another minute or two of frying before the potatoes attain this state. If the temperature reaches 360° F., lower the heat.

When the Tuscan fries are nearly ready, grind 6 to 8 turnings of the pepper mill over them in the oil and stir well. Using the skimmer, lift the potatoes from the oil (with the herbs and garlic—all of them delicious).

Place the potatoes, herbs, and garlic in a basket or deep dish lined with paper, blot the top, transfer to a paper-lined plate, and serve immediately (or keep warm in a 250° F. oven while you make another batch). Serves 2 Tuscans, 3 or 4 Americans.

Note: The oil can be used again to make additional batches of potatoes, but only within a few hours—salt breaks down frying oil. After the first frying, use only half the herbs and salt (but all the garlic), because the oil becomes imbued with their flavors. And make sure the oil remains 13/4 inches deep.

Cesare’s herbed potatoes are not classically French fries. They break all the rules. In fact, French fries are not classically French. Belgians point out that true French fries are made by using two frying baths, the first at a lower temperature than the second, just as Alain Passard makes them, and that French cooks did not double-fry their fries until well into this century, long after the Belgians had discovered the principle. Only Americans attribute fries to the French.
The Oxford English Dictionary
dates the name back to 1894, when it appeared in “Tictocq,” a short story by the American writer O. Henry, which was published in his humorous weekly, the
Rolling Stone,
just before he fled the country on a charge of bank embezzlement in Austin, Texas. The
OED
should hire my assistant Tara Thomas, who has found another, perhaps earlier, 1894 instance in a recipe for “French fried potatoes” in Dr. N. T, Oliver’s cookbook,
Treasured Secrets,
in the New York Public Library.

Neither source treats the name as unusual or exotic, and so it must have been current in speech and perhaps even print, although nobody has found an earlier example. Some people believe that the “French” in “French-fried potatoes” comes from the culinary verb “to french,” meaning to cut into thin strips, as in “trenched beans.” (This does not explain why we use “french-ing” to refer to short-sheeting a bed as a practical joke. The British call it an “apple-pie” bed, for no apparent reason.) The nickname “French fries” first appears in print in 1918, though Graham Greene uses the compromise phrase “French frieds” as late as 1958 in
Our Man from Havana,
which you should read as soon as possible—if you haven’t already. There is no record of when “fries” alone appeared.