Eating (16 page)

If you are not handy with a cleaver and saw, ask your butcher to split the lamb in two lengthwise and divide each leg in three pieces and each shoulder in two, leaving a few ribs attached. Then divide the remainder of the rack and the saddle into four pieces.
Following a recipe by Marcia Dorr in
A Taste of Oman,
I made a rub of equal amounts of powdered cinnamon, cumin, cloves, and cardamom sufficient to cover the pieces of lamb, added half as much fresh-ground black pepper as each spice, and let the lamb rest in this rub for two hours or so. The previous night, I had soaked two pounds of pitted dates in water to cover, and in the morning ran the softened dates through a food processor, adding maybe a half-cup of Omani date syrup—an optional ingredient which may not be easily available outside of Oman. In a heavy kettle, I browned the lamb in two cups of peanut oil, poured off and discarded most of the oil, removed the lamb, and threw in the puréed dates and syrup, a cup each
of lemon juice and sherry vinegar, and some sea salt, and reduced the liquid by half. Then I checked the salt again, arranged the lamb in two layers, covered the pot, leaving the lid slightly ajar, and braised the lamb over a medium-low flame, turning the pieces from time to time so as not to scorch it. I checked the lamb occasionally for tenderness and to make sure that the liquid had not evaporated. If it had evaporated, I would have added a little water. After an hour or so, the meat was caramelized and falling off the bone.

I served it with three pounds of parsnips, which I cut in chunks and boiled till tender, then puréed in a food processor with a cup of half and half and a touch of powdered ginger.

My friend and neighbor Sheila Lukens contributed two bottles of a fine Mt. Eden Syrah, and so ten of us celebrated the annual rebirth of the land in Omani style, more or less.

S
trip away the trimmings and you will find that all living things, from dainty amoeba to lumbering elephant, from wiry Barack Obama to leafy maple, share a common structure: an alimentary system supporting a reproductive apparatus. Why this of all possible arrangements should be our fate is anybody’s guess. But it is plain that in the great game of survival every living thing requires nourishment in order to replicate itself and defend the tenuous grip of its species on its place in nature. Because survival demands excess, fussy feeders and reluctant breeders vanish from the gene pool, leaving stronger appetites in charge: witness the maple feasting on sunlight, then showering its multitudinous seed on the ground, or the voracious trout and its redundant spawn, or the human obsession with these twin excesses, haunting our dreams, stories, art, and music.

All other living things rely on instinct or design to
govern their hunger and lust, for unregulated desire means conflict, corruption of the habitat, and eventual extinction. The isolated forest regulates itself. The lion takes a zebra from its herd, shares it with its pride, then sleeps like its pussycat cousin sated on Purina as the herd moves on, food for another day. But when human beings encounter a pretty face or fowl, external constraints are needed. Hence our collective submission, older than recorded time, to priests, magistrates, and sacred texts to curb desire: a survival strategy embedded in ritual, law, and conscience called civilization. This uniquely human condition is foreshadowed in the expulsion of our ancestral parents from their garden of primal instinct and thrust into lives of self-denial—of either/or—a burden and an opportunity devolved upon their progeny to the present day.

In my own case, some years ago I put myself in the hands of a physician famous for curing addictions. His technique, with the help of a hypnotic drug and a rumored cattle prod, was to associate the unwanted appetite with unpleasantness, and so for several years thereafter I dined parsimoniously until the treatment failed, for eating is not an addiction, like drugs or tobacco, that can be squelched outright. Later I turned to the late Dr. Atkins and lost twenty pounds in two months of carbohydrate starvation—only to gain ten back a month later and the rest a bit more eventually.

From my Atkins adventure I contracted a few lasting aversions: pretzels, which I never liked anyway, and
bagels, with their forty grams of densely packed carbohydrates. But I see no reason to eschew the wild Baltic salmon from Russ & Daughters or Lombardi’s pizza or Di Palo’s incomparable gorgonzola dolce on a Tuscan cracker. Perhaps my New York neighborhood with its multitudinous temptations is at fault. But I chose to live here. There is no escaping one’s self.

I began this book in the blueberry season when I violated my vow to forgo another pie and ready myself for a year of abstinence. Now it is apple time and my resolve has again failed. I have baked a tarte tatin and will not pretend to bake no more. Tarte tatin can also be made with pears (comice are best, just as they begin to ripen).
For the traditional tarte tatin, however, you must use apples, preferably Golden Delicious, which are not good eaten raw but hold their shape nicely in a tart. The tarte tatin is baked upside down, with the apples under the crust, which, when the finished tart is flipped, becomes the bottom. I peel, core, and quarter four Golden Delicious apples. Then, in the copper tatin pan that I bought from Fred Bridge fifty years ago, I caramelize a half-cup or so of granulated sugar in a quarter-stick of unsalted butter until the sugar becomes the color of honey. Be careful not to cook the caramel for more than a few seconds beyond this stage or the sugar will darken too much. You can move the caramel with a wooden spoon to even the color, which will be a little darker in some places than others. Then turn off the flame and wipe the wooden spoon clean (or the sugar will
harden and stick to it). Carefully, for the caramel is burning hot, lay the apple wedges thick side down in a circle on the caramel, shaping one of the quarters to fill the center of the circle. Use any remaining scraps to fill gaps and sprinkle a good handful of arrowroot over the apples to hold the syrup. Now make a crust of simple pie dough by spinning in a food processor two cups of all-purpose flour with a stick of unsalted butter cut into chunks until the butter is incorporated but still a little lumpy. Then add a half-cup or a little less of ice water, a sprinkle at a time, processing after each addition, until the dough begins to form. As soon as it forms, remove it from the processor onto a marble slab or plastic sheet, and knead the dough into an oblong. You might enclose the dough in plastic wrap at this point and let it rest in the refrigerator for a half hour or so to relax the gluten, or you can skip this step, as I usually do. Then roll out the dough in a circle about an eighth of an inch thick, place the tarte pan with its apples (or pears) adjacent to the dough, roll the dough onto the rolling pin, and place it over the apples, discarding the trimmings or saving them for another purpose. With a fork I tuck the edge of the dough down into the pan. Then I slip the pie onto the middle shelf of an oven just under 360 degrees, at which temperature the fruit will not stick to the pan when you turn it right side up. But if you forget and some of the slices stick, just shove them with a wooden spoon from the pan into the gaps where they belong and smooth everything out. When the crust begins to darken, after about forty minutes, slip the pie out of the oven and let it cool for
ten minutes or so. Then carefully place the plate on which you plan to serve the tarte over the pastry and flip the pie over. If the syrup is still runny, spoon it back over the pie and with a damp paper towel wipe up any excess syrup from the serving plate. A dedicated tarte tatin pan is not essential. A well-seasoned iron skillet or even an eight-inch sauté pan will do just as well. Serve the tarte warm with vanilla ice cream.

And so life goes on.

Jason Epstein has led one of the most creative careers in book publishing of the past half century. In 1952, while a young editor at Doubleday, he created Anchor Books, which launched the so-called paperback revolution and established the trade-paperback format. In the following decade, he became cofounder of
The New York Review of Books.
In the 1980s, he created the Library of America, the prestigious publisher of American classics, and The Reader’s Catalog, the precursor of online bookselling. For many years, Jason Epstein was editorial director of Random House. He was the first recipient of the National Book Award for Distinguished Service to American Letters, and he has been given the Curtis Benjamin Award of the Association of American Publishers for “inventing new kinds of publishing and editing” as well as the Lifetime Achievement Award of the National Book Critic’s Circle and the Philolexian Award for Distinguished Literary Achievement. He has edited many well-known novelists, including Norman Mailer, Vladimir Nabokov, E. L. Doctorow, Peter Matthiessen, Philip Roth, and Gore Vidal, as well as many important writers of nonfiction.