Wed 14 May 2008
Let me clarify that header for a moment: I am in my underpants. The bánh mì is in a take-away bag and will soon be in me, after I have eaten it while sitting on my couch in my underpants.
If this image disturbs you then please don’t even think of the image of it being made—a walk-up suite of a dingy commercial building near Jean-Talon metro; smears of this and that onto a slit baguette drawn from a plastic bag sitting on a stool behind the counter; the mayo role played by some gelatinous looking yellow stuff, kind of what homemade mayo left out in the sun for a week would look like. (stop reading this, mother) But the true scare comes from the variety of meats (which may in fact be variety meats, that is, dog in a can) that are lovingly layered onto this Vietnamese sub. Even the most tee-pee-call of Italian mountain salumi don’t use pig as efficiently as these three pinkpork products would seem to have.
Back to me in my drawers. I have just returned from a very successful morning at the market where I went to buy lemons and cucumbers. I got a little warm after the jaunt, so stripped down for lunch and a little planning before moving on with my afternoon. I have been inspired (and shamed) by the wondrous and fearless W. Yang, and am finally getting off my ass to make some homemade preserved stuff. (Later in the year I plan to be jamming and curing salmon.)
The lemons are for limoncello. Having had success with a batch of the lovely digestif in Italy, I’ll be trying to reproduce the results here in Canada. (I imagine it will be very similar since the lemons there and the lemons here all seem to come from the same hothouse in Spain.) Curiously, the 94% Alcool I bought here at the SAQ cost $60 for 1.14 L. Shocker! Grain alcohol at Coop in Colorno was 10 or 12 euros. The Québec government clearly isn’t into supporting ethnic gastronomic tra-dee-shun.
The cucumbers are for pickles. I bought the Ruhlman and Polcyn Charcuterie book (again due to the Yang’s shamespiration) and thought I’d start at the bottom. Guanciale (cured pig cheek) seems a bit bold for my first curing attempt. But with my haul of spices from Frenco (10 little bags of coriander, cinnamon, fennel seed, yellow mustard, mace, etc. etc.) and a couple of giant glass pickling jars from Nino, I’m feeling ready for a baby brining step. Coarse salt and white wine vinegar (both Portuguese) and fresh dill came from Sakaris and I’m going to add cumin because they’re Lebanese cucumbers—though locally grown in some Québecois glass- or poly-tunnel. I’m also doing some carrots and cauliflower and kohlrabi, with rice vinegar and some Peruvian aji pinguita de mono chiles I got at Jean-Talon. Poor little pickles—they’re going to have no clue what their cultural identity is.
As I pop down the last of the bánh mì, I think of its multicult status and the absolute satisfaction (salt, sweet, spice; fat, crunch, chew; authentic, synthetic, immigrant) that I get from consuming it. I am what I eat, making me deeply sympathetic with my pickles-to-be. Half-clothed, salty, and immersed in globality.