Beaten, Seared, and Sauced by Jonathan Dixon Read Free Book Online Page B

the first piece and write down our reaction to it. It tasted disgustingly bitter, inedible, and it took some effort to keep from spitting it into my napkin. I reported as much on my comment sheet. The next piece was cheap milk chocolate; it was cloying and I could almost feel my pancreas twitch. The next had a slightly darker hue and contained less sugar. We moved through the plate, each piece progressively less sweet until we came to the final one. It had an alkaline quality to it and felt metallic on my tongue, but it also had a complexity that I hadn’t recognized in any of the others. It turned out that the first and last pieces were the same, and it was to demonstrate how the palate could be manipulated. The progressive bitterness primed the tongue as it went, until what was initially terrible revealed its nuances. I thought the experience was kind of profound and dramatic; a bunch of the kids thought it was bullshit. There was, as far they could tell, no practical application for this knowledge. I suspected that this thinking was also the reason why the library was never crowded.
    The other academic class was Product Knowledge, taught by a local farmer and former football coach, Darryl Mosher. Mosher was a big, serious man with a tight crew cut who didn’t laugh very much. Hewas a formidable guy and charged with teaching the students how to identify vegetables and to select the best examples of them. I imagined him as the Vince Lombardi of produce. He was a constant presence at the Rhinebeck farmers’ market, and I always envisioned him going through his stock, discarding a too-large zucchini or an overripe tomato, saying, “There’s no room for second place at this farm stand.” This was a class that everyone agreed was essential. It was also a ton of work. We all knew what broccoli was, obviously, but differentiating between a dozen varieties of apples was challenging. It wasn’t always easy telling five kinds of cooking greens apart, or keeping track of twelve or thirteen species of mushrooms.
    With every piece of produce, Mosher informed us of how to recognize when one was fresh or perfectly ripe. He offered tastings of just about everything we were shown in class, and because it was summer, there was a lot of produce to study. Everything was to be committed to memory. Apples, berries, cherries, and lemons won’t ripen off the vine, but melons, pears, avocados, and bananas will. Tomatoes will ripen but not become more flavorful off the vine, so often, Mosher told us, they are picked while green, gassed with ethylene until red, and shipped to the supermarket where they arrive tasting of nothing. If, at the beginning of the course, you had a hard time identifying the herb savory, or telling the difference between oregano and marjoram, Thai and regular basil, or a selection of various mints, you had better get things straight.
    You can tell a piece of broccoli is fresh by looking at the cut at the bottom of the stem; if it isn’t cracked or doesn’t have the slightest brownish tint to it, if it is pale green and moist, it is pretty fresh. The flowers on top—the green stuff—should be tight and vibrant. It should feel heavy in the hand.
    A cantaloupe should have a strong cantaloupe smell. It too should feel heavy, and its “belly button” should be smooth, inverted, and round. The webbing should be raised and distinct, dry, with very little green. A honeydew should feel waxy and tacky, with a little give whereit was cut. Tomatoes contain three acids: malic, glutamic, and citric. Dark tomatoes are high in acid; yellow or light tomatoes are lower.
    Three days a week, for two hours a shot, we were bombarded with fruits and vegetables. We were to test what we learned by making regular trips to the CIA’s storage room—a dark, refrigerated area where all the produce was held before being distributed to the kitchen classrooms. Everything was labeled so you could go through and handle, smell, and squeeze a