DALLAS — We really should have been back at the Fourth National Conference on Gastronomy, eating a luncheon of a lot of hard to pronounce French dishes (cassolette de coquille St. Jacques et d’oursins, fricassee de volaille aux epices, millefeuille aux pommes...) and drinking enormous quantities of wine. That’s what 350 other wine and food professionals were doing at the American Institute of Wine & Food affair.
Instead there we were, hunkered down in the window of a vast tortilla factory eating incredibly hot food with our fingers and drinking Corona from the bottle…..
That’s the beginning of the first story I wrote about Calvin Trillin. He had gone sneaking away from the fancy affair with me, Alice Waters and his wife Alice in tow. While our colleagues were chowing down on assorted sea urchins, we inhaled mountains of barbacoa and pig skins in green sauce so hot it melted our spoons. And that was before we went off to eat barbacue at Sonny Bryan’s.
You can read that story here, but it was not the last time I wrote about Mr. Trillin.
When my first story about Calvin Trillin was printed in the Los Angeles Times I woke up in the middle of the night feeling sick. I’d misspelled his name, I was sure of it, and it was too late to fix it.
My nausea was so intense I could barely make it into the office the next morning. I expected an angry message from the celebrated writer, and waited, trembling, for the call that would end my career. “How could any decent reporter misspell Calvin Trillin’s name?” my editor would say. “You’re fired!”
But it turned out to be the midnight blues, the crazy nightmare of writing about someone you deeply admire. I was sure I’d made a mistake because Calvin Trillin wasn’t just another writer who (occasionally) took food as his subject; he was the one who deflated the balloon, took the hot air out of food writing. And he did it without ever descending into snideness.
Over the years I’d come to know him well enough to call him Bud (everyone who’s ever met him does), but the first time I called him in an editorial capacity my hands were shaking as I punched in his phone number. I really wanted him to write for Gourmet, and I was not convinced he would. But I had an ace in the hole.
His name is Nick.
“So what did you and Bud do after the game?” I asked Nick the first time the two vanished into Chinatown. Their goal was to beat New York’s most brilliant chicken at tic tac toe.
“Eat.” Nick was vague.
I pressed on. “Where?”
“In a restaurant.” Although Nick and Bud had a standing Chinatown date, my son remained maddeningly mum about the details. He would, occasionally, admit to having stopped in to see the Egg-Cake Lady, who baked irresistible little cookies in a sidewalk lean-to on Mosco Street. “I ate ten,” Nick told me once. “I just couldn’t stop. They’re hollow inside!”
Bud now answered on the first ring. “Is it time to visit the chicken?” he asked hopefully when I identified myself.
“This isn’t about Nick,” I replied. “I was wondering if you’d write for us.”
The ensuing a silence was not promising. “You can write about anything you want,” I urged. “I’ll send you anywhere in the world.”
The silence continued, but now I could hear him breathing. It seemed like a good sign. “Well,” Bud drew the word out into many syllables, “I did eat these fantastic peppers a couple of years ago in Spain. I can’t stop thinking about them, but you can’t get them here.”
“Spain!” I leapt on this idea before he could have second thoughts. “We’ll send you. Business class. How soon can you go?”
“If the New Yorker wants the story....” He was hedging, but I knew I had him. At the time The New Yorker had very little interest in food. Why would they want to send a writer to Spain, at great expense, to seek out some obscure pepper nobody had ever heard of?
I was thrilled to have Bud writing for the magazine, and I probably would have published the piece even if it wasn’t very good. But it was more than good. And unlike most writers, Bud’s pieces always come in on time, at the right length, and with scrupulous documentation to back up every assertion. He was an editor’s dream.
And his stories had legs.
“Bud called,” Nick reported a year or so later when I got home from work.
“Is it time to try and defeat the chicken again?”
“They retired the chicken,” he said, with some disgust. “Some animal rights group......”
“So what did he want?”
“He wants us to come eat pimientos de padron.”
“He wants us to go to Spain?”
“No!” Nick was gleeful. “Some guy smuggled the pepper seeds in from Spain and now he’s growing them in New Jersey. He’s sending a bunch of them to Bud.” He looked at me pleadingly. “We’re going, right?”
Right.
Pimientos de Padron alla Trillin If you are going to do this right, you begin by inviting all your friends to come to your house wearing indestructible clothing. Then you hop on your bike and peddle to Chinatown, where you buy, in no particular order:
Chive pancakes
Meat-filled dumplings
Spicy noodles
If you’re in a good mood you then go to Little Italy, where you purchase salami, prosciutto bread and really good parmesan cheese.
For your last stop you go to the Ice Cream Store.
You fill your refrigerator with beer and wine (preferably made by Bud’s good friend Bruce Neyers), and you set the takeout food out on platters.
You fill a large pot with Wesson Oil and allow your friends to take turns dropping the pimientos de padron into the hot oil until they wrinkle up and turn brown. You put them on paper towel-lined plates, sprinkle them with salt, and eat them with gusto.
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This menu, from Chris Cosentino’s Incanto in San Francisco, strikes me as a menu that Bud would very much appreciate.
I thought about Bud the other night when I was standing over a big pot poaching spot prawns. He shoulda been there; it was the best meal I’ve made in a long time. Maybe ever.
These spot prawns came from e-fish, a supplier that works directly with fishermen. They came from Washington State and arrived still very much alive and kicking. They’re expensive, but they have a short season and they are stunningly delicious.
I poached them in boiling water for about 30 seconds, and served them with this simple sauce. Do not miss the best part, which is sucking the heads.
Dipping Sauce 2 cloves garlic, minced 2 scallions finely chopped a few stalks cilantro, finely chopped 1 shallot, finely chopped 2 Thai red chilis, finely chopped (keep the seeds in if you crave real heat; otherwise remove them.) 2 teaspoons brown sugar 1 tablespoon soy sauce 1/4 cup neutral vegetable oil
Put the garlic, scallions, brown sugar, cilantro, shallot and soy sauce in a small bowl.
Heat the vegetable oil in a small pot and pour it over the mixture. You should hear a good sizzle.
Every year my friends Nancy Silverton, Laurie Ochoa, Alec Lobrano and I put together a dream vacation - and then invite a few more friends to join us. Over the past few years we’ve visited Tuscany, Umbria, Paris, Marseille and Nice, but this fall we’ve put together the trip I’m most excited about. And we’ve just added a few more places.
The Basque region (both in France and Spain), is home to some of the world’s finest food. Our odyssey this year takes us to Biarritz, Bordeaux, San Sebastian and Etxebarri. (I am VERY excited about visiting Asador Etxebarri, which many people considered the best restaurant in the world.)
Want to join us? I can promise that it will be delicious fun. Read details here.
You threw me back to my time in Spain. Padron peppers. I used to lightly oil them in a bowl, tossing them with my hands, then on a dry solid based skillet (heated to the point of worry) toss them in and shake them around until browned. The fun part was that 1 in 50 are supposedly spicy hot, a Russian Roulette of appetisers. Anyway, thanks for taking me back to the olive groves of Southern Spain. My mouth is watering for some.
You threw me back to my time in Spain. Padron peppers. I used to lightly oil them in a bowl, tossing them with my hands, then on a dry solid based skillet (heated to the point of worry) toss them in and shake them around until browned. The fun part was that 1 in 50 are supposedly spicy hot, a Russian Roulette of appetisers. Anyway, thanks for taking me back to the olive groves of Southern Spain. My mouth is watering for some.
I love Calvin Trillin, everything he writes, politics or food. Rereading always makes me laugh. He's a treasure.