Before I launch into my latest nerd fest musings I thought I should introduce myself to those of you who are new here. I’m Evan Kleiman, born and bred in Los Angeles, palate formed in Italy, life long cook who for a time (30 yrs) was a chef/restauranteur and who now explores food primarily through a radio show/podcast called Good Food. I’ve been the host of the show since 1998. Good Food airs in Southern California on Saturday mornings at 10am on 89.9fm KCRW. The podcast is available everywhere as KCRW’s Good Food. If you’re not sure if you want to commit to a listen, here’s a link to my weekly newsletter I write for the show. One of my intentions for the year is to post more regularly here, but I’m curious about what you’d like me to share.
Meanwhile…I’ve been fascinated by the relationship between air and aroma for a long time. After all, aromas swirl up into the air and are carried within it. The 18th century author of The Physiology of Taste, Brillat-Savarin wrote “Smell and taste form a single sense of which the mouth is the laboratory and the nose is the chimney”. If you lost your sense of taste due to covid you understand how true this is. I think of food and beverage aromas as clouds of pleasure. See reference to nerd fest. The last nerdy talk I gave before the pandemic was about the borderlessness of air.
Recently I was watching the small pot of ingredients for my mid-morning cup of mocha come to the boil when I started thinking about how how foam links air, taste, and aroma. It was so pleasurable to watch the bubbles start to form at the sides of the pot and gather together as the liquid begins the full boil then starts to rise. I promised myself (I don’t make resolutions per se since they’re all blown by January 2) to be more cognizant of small pleasures and nurture them than I have in the past. I realized watching the liquid gather and rise and how foam in beverages builds is one of these small pleasures. Think of how in Mexican beverage culture, foam, particularly on drinking chocolate, has a spiritual aspect. Foam was created by pouring the drink from one vessel to another until the molinillo came to be in general use. It’s the wooden tool held between two palms and twirled to aerate hot chocolate and is very fun if initially awkward to use.
But this gesture of pouring from one vessel to another is so beautiful, nearly a dance and it happens all over the place. Moroccan tea is often served from on high which allows the tea to aerate and form bubbles atop the hot beverage. In India chai wallahs will mix and aerate hot chai by repeatedly lifting and pouring the liquid from one container to another before finally serving it in a small cup or glass with an evanescent layer of foam that quickly dissipates. In Spain wine poured from high up using a porrón is a dramatic move that creates foam as the stream of liquid hits the wineglass (or mouth).
Many of the beverages we drink everyday are topped with foam. We delight in it. Think of that micro foamed Aussie flat white. Or beer, of course. So here’s my beginning of year reminder to take pleasure in small things. They’re all around us.
As for what I’m thinking about, reading, watching etc. I lost one of my cousins a few weeks ago. She was a remarkable woman so I thought I’d share her NYT obit. At least once a year I fall down the rabbit hole that is the UN Migration Data Portal. Did you know that one in thirty people worldwide are migrants? A look at food inflation through the lens of a halal chicken cart, a staple street food in NYC. On a lighter note my international police procedural obsession is currently being fed by the Italian show, Imma Tataranni. Set in the gorgeous town of Matera in Basilicata, Deputy Prosecutor, Tataranni channels her inner Montalbano. I’m also enjoying Mord mit Aussicht aka Homicide Hills, a hilarious German show about a cosmopolitan police inspector who makes a wrong move and is sent to head up a small town police force of three. My favorite cookbook lately is one I recently covered for Good Food. It’s Zarghuna Adel’s The Best of Afghan Cooking.
Loved this.
So sorry to hear about Tanya. How did I miss that?