The Catskill Chronicle

I have a singular memory from many years ago: one morning, I left my apartment near Washington Square Park, and headed toward Bleecker Street to get some crusty, freshly baked bread at the venerable, though now defunct, neighborhood bread shop, Zito’s.  On Sixth Avenue, a woman timidly approached me. She was wearing a fanny pack and clutching the camera strap crossing her breast so tightly that her knuckles were white. “Are you Greenwich Village?” she haltingly asked me. I hesitated a moment. I thought to myself, ‘What a difficult language English must be to master, between the grammar and pronunciation.’ There are virtually no rules, or at least, little consistency. Why don’t we pronounce the “r” in iron and why is the “ch” silent in yacht? “Yes, I am Greenwich Village,” I said to the woman. She seemed relieved, and headed off to explore whatever she had come to see.

That encounter reminded me that any foreign language is tricky to grasp.

I thought back to a couple of trips to Europe with my sister, Janet, when I was solely responsible for handling all of our communication. I have a pretty good ear for language, and decent enough pronunciation, but more to the point, Janet didn’t want to make a fool of herself and simply refused to try negotiating the language in a foreign country.

One morning in Paris, we decided to have the complimentary breakfast at our hotel rather than going to a cafe. While waiting to place our order, we constructed a loose itinerary for the day ahead. We had read in a guide book about a museum, the Jeu de Paume, which looked on the map as if it was not far from our hotel. When the waitress arrived at our table, I summoned my best junior high school French and asked her where the Jeu de Paume was.  After a quizzical look, she replied (in French), “We only have orange juice.” I exchanged glances with Janet (who understands a bit of French, even if she won’t try saying it aloud) and we both turned blank gazes on the waitress. She, too, looked confused. A woman at a nearby table cleared her throat. Janet and I turned to her. “I think you asked her where the apple juice is, and she’s letting you know they haven’t any. They do, however, have orange juice.” Though appearing to be helpful, this woman was clearly stifling a laugh. Apparently my pronunciation of Jeu de Paume could not be distinguished from jus de pomme. Even now I’m not sure I can hear the difference. “Merci, non,” I responded politely to the waitress.

On another trip—this one to Italy—I again found myself the spokesperson. My Italian phrase book had all of these stuffy, lengthy ways of asking for everything. Instead of just saying, “Where’s the bathroom?” I would have to memorize how to say, “Pardon me, would you please be so kind as to tell me where the bathroom is located?” It sounded idiotic to me and was clearly too formal, so I decided to shorten phrases as we do in English. In restaurants, whenever I was unsure of what had been brought to us, instead of asking, “What is the name by which this is called?” I would ask, “What is this?” Or so I thought. After returning home to New York, we discovered that during the entire trip to Italy I had mistakenly been using the word “this” in place of “what.” I had spent two weeks pointing to my plate and asking, “This is it?” instead of “What is this?” Equally embarrassing, this is the same trip in which I would sometimes inquire if a waiter or salesperson spoke a little English. The only problem was that I used the term “un piccolo” instead of “un poco” and was actually asking if they spoke a small English. How very stupido I must have appeared!

For years, when we visited my brother, Buzz, and his family in Philly,we would go to Chinatown for dim   sum. Buzz, who’d been eating this Asian brunch for many years, proudly enjoyed ordering each dish in Chinese. When the waitress stopped at our table with her cart laden with delicacies, my brother would confidently crow,  “Ha Gow” and “ Char Siu Bao.” After a moment’s hesitation (as, I fancied, she tried to decipher his pronunciation), she placed two dishes on the table. For all I know, she had just handed us whatever the kitchen had overproduced and wanted to get rid of. I can’t be sure, because when I asked my brother what he had just ordered for all of us, he’d turn to me and say, “ Ha Gow” and “Char Siu Bao.” “Thanks a lot, Buzz, that’s helpful, I could be eating monkey spleen,” I refrained from saying.

The last time I truly didn’t have a clue regarding communication was on another trip to Italy. Janet and I had taken two buses, and then walked quite a few blocks on a sopping wet afternoon, to get to a particular restaurant in Milan that our guide book highly recommended. For the first time ever, I could not decipher any items on the menu. Usually, my phrase book offered various alternative names for anything I wanted to order. Shrimp, for instance, can be referred to in about eight different ways. But there was no help for this menu. There was no translation from the Italian, and I felt utterly lost. At that time in my life, I ate no veal, pork, beef or lamb, so I simply told the waiter, “No carne,” meaning no meat. Then I waved my hand over the menu in such a way as to indicate that he should choose for us. Awhile later, he presented us with a plate of food that was as alien to us as the menu. It was, basically, a colorless mound of thin slabs of something or other covered with equally colorless strands of something else. “You try it,” I suggested to Janet. “Why me? Why don’t you try it?” she said. “It may be meat,” I countered. I hadn’t partaken in over twenty years, so I figured she wouldn’t expect me to be the guinea pig in this instance. Finally, Janet took a forkful. It turned out to be (as far as she could tell, without us pointing to it and asking, “This is it?”), slices of pork covered with sauerkraut. It wasn’t awful, but she never would’ve ordered it, and of course I couldn’t help her out by eating any of it.

Luckily, while she was pushing it around her plate, the waiter brought over a dish we immediately recognized. It was a couple of grilled triangles of cornmeal polenta, each topped with a fried egg. As the waiter stepped back from the table, the chef, with a huge, perfectly white toque atop his head, appeared as if from nowhere and ceremoniously waved a huge white truffle in the air. He placed it first under my nose and then Janet’s. We inhaled the musky, earthy scent. With a metal gadget I’d never seen before, the chef began to shave the truffle into paper-thin slices. They fell like confetti onto the fried eggs and golden polenta slices. He bowed solemnly and headed back to the kitchen, taking the remainder of the precious truffle with him. He should have stayed to see our faces when we tasted this extraordinary dish that was unlike anything we had ever eaten or imagined. It was one of the most unforgettable food experiences of my life. I felt like running after him, straight into his kitchen and embracing him while exclaiming, “Merci, merci, c’est magnifique!” No, wait a minute—that’s French, not Italian…

Grilled Polenta

Serves 4 as a side dish

These grilled polenta squares, topped with a saute of wild mushrooms or shredded Fontina cheese, would make a distinctive appetizer.

 

1 cup coarse yellow cornmeal

4 ½ cups water

1 teaspoon coarse salt (such as kosher)

½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese (preferably Parmigiano-Reggiano)

2 tablespoons butter

In a large saucepan, bring 4 cups of water and the salt to a simmer. In a kettle, bring the ½ cup of water to the boil, then lower the heat under it to keep it hot. Add the cornmeal very slowly, in a thin stream, to the saucepan while stirring with a wooden spoon. Cook, stirring often, for 10 minutes. It should be bubbling very gently and thickening slowly to the consistency of farina or cream of wheat cereal. Add the ½ cup of hot water to the saucepan and continue cooking another 7 – 8 minutes until thickened further. Remove from the heat and stir in the butter and cheese. Pour the mixture into a greased baking pan approx. 11 x 7” or you can use a square brownie pan. Let cool 5 minutes, then cover with plastic wrap or foil and chill in the refrigerator at least 2 hours until set. Gently cut the firm polenta into squares, triangles, or rectangles and lift from the pan. I like to sauté them on a medium-high heat, in a mixture of butter and extra virgin olive oil, in a non-stick pan, but they can also be put under the broiler or cooked on a stove-top grill. Cook them until heated through and browned a bit, about 2 or 3 minutes per side. You can keep them warm in a 350-degree oven for 15 minutes or so, while you prepare a topping, such as a sauté of wild mushrooms.

Sauté of Wild Mushrooms

Serves 4 as a side dish

These savory mushrooms are wonderful served on grilled polenta squares or rounds of toasted crostini made from a good baguette.

 

1 pound wild mushrooms (such as shitake, chanterelle, hen of the woods, cremini, and portabella)

2 shallots, minced

2 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

Salt and freshly ground pepper

3 tablespoon Madeira, Marsala, or cooking sherry

3 tablespoon heavy cream

1 tablespoon fresh parsley, minced

Drizzle of white or black truffle oil

Melt the butter and oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the shallots and cook a couple of minutes, until transparent. Discard mushroom stems and slice the mushroom caps. If mushrooms are large, cut them in half or quarters so that mushroom pieces are uniform in size. Add mushrooms to the pan and cook, stirring, 2 minutes. Raise the heat to high and continue sautéing until the mushrooms are browned, about 2 or 3 more minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add the Madeira and let it cook off and evaporate. Add the cream and do the same. There should be no liquid. Drizzle with a bit of truffle oil. Sprinkle with the parsley and serve immediately.