14
BARCELONA
My watch said four A.M. In Los Angeles it was dark. Even the freeways would be deserted, with only an occasional headlight picking out the contours of the road. But in Barcelona the sun was still up, and I had to get through one more night without Gavi. I threw my suitcase on the bed and splashed water on my face. Halfway around the world, this trip had seemed like a perfect escape. Now the idea of spending a week in Barcelona with five famous American chefs just seemed like piling jet lag onto misery.
“Hello, I’m hungry,” said Alice, peeking around the door. After years as America’s most famous chef, the woman who was called “the mother of California cuisine” was still pretty and petite. “Did you just land? Me too. I ate all the food on the plane, even that terrible tired spinach, but it wasn’t much. It’s three whole hours until we’re supposed to meet the others for dinner, and I can’t wait. Let’s go out and see what we can find.”
It was April, and the air was crisp when we left the hotel, the city too delicious to resist. Rococo buildings were piled onto the sidewalk like pastries on a plate. We walked down the Rambla Catalunya, through lanes of double lime trees and past stalls selling lilacs, lilies, violets, and roses. “Isn’t it beautiful?” said Alice, who filled my silence with a running commentary. “And just smell.”
In spite of myself I wrinkled my nose and inhaled the city. We walked beneath the beautiful wrought-iron street lamps of the Passeig de Gràcia and turned to twist through smaller streets where each block wore a different perfume. One had the scent of salted fish, the next frying dough, and just beyond that we discovered the ripe yeasty aroma of cheese. And then, halfway down a block, the warm smell of roasting nuts came out to ambush us.
“Look!” said Alice, pointing to a little spice shop on the far side of the street. In the window stood a woman holding a scoop filled with toasted almonds. She smiled, and Alice pulled me across the street.
Inside the shop, saffron, cinnamon, and mint mingled with the aroma of the nuts. The woman gestured, inviting us to come closer as she raked the almonds into a huge pile. Alice and I plunged our hands into the warm mound until they were covered all the way to the wrists. I closed my hand, retracted it, and put an almond in my mouth; the fragrance swelled to fill my entire head.
We munched on almonds as we walked, and then Alice discovered new treats: olives, anchovies, ice cream. “I’m really worried about this dinner,” she confided. “We’re supposed to cook a meal for absolutely everybody who counts in the Barcelona food world, to show them how American cooking has matured. But these collaboration dinners are always difficult. Doing one in a foreign city, with people you haven’t worked with, products you don’t know, and no time to practice is insane. I can’t believe any of us agreed to it!”
“Yes,” I said absently; just in front of us a little girl was toddling down the street with her mother, and my mind was in Mexico, with Gavi.
We walked and fretted; by the time we reached the restaurant in the city’s ancient port I was too tired and full to go on. “I’ll just meet you guys in the morning,” I said, turning back to the hotel. Alice grabbed my arm. “You’ll wake up when the food comes,” she promised, pulling me inexorably through the door. “You don’t want to miss this.”
“Yes, I do,” I muttered, but I was already inside the worn wooden room. In here, it seemed, nothing had changed for centuries. Chefs in starched white jackets tended a wood-burning oven, separated from the diners by a long zinc-lined bar. Three huge vats of wine roosted beneath it; on top a block of ice slowly dripped onto the wooden floor.
Our fellow travelers were seated at a long table piled with plates of seafood. Mark Miller and Jonathan Waxman looked cool, cosmopolitan, and slightly bored, as if they had been sitting in the restaurant all their lives waiting for the rest of us to arrive. Bradley Ogden, on the other hand, had the eager-beaver air of the American tourist; it was his first trip to Europe, and his eyes darted around as if he were afraid something important would happen while he wasn’t watching. Lydia Shire, a comfortable-looking woman with a frank, open face, pointed something out to him. His mouth dropped in astonishment.
Colman was there too, and for a moment I was surprised to see him. Locked inside my own sadness, I had forgotten that it was he who had organized this tour of Barcelona. He had become an authority on Catalan cooking, and he seemed pleased to have us assembled on his turf. I remembered, with a little jolt, that the last time we had shared this continent we had been in love. It seemed so long ago.
“Taste this,” he said, barely pausing to say hello. Alice and I sat down, and he passed us each a wooden fork and a small terra-cotta casserole.
“What is it?” asked Alice. The aroma of garlic was so intense it began to wake me up. I shook my head, trying to clear it, and gazed down into a pool of golden oil containing whole cloves of garlic and what looked like small straight pins.
“Taste,” he commanded.
Alice and I obediently stuck our wooden forks into the oil and fished out a pin. I put it in my mouth; it was blazingly hot and startlingly tender, with a gentle sweetness tinged with salt. The garlic was subtle, no more than a lingering aftertaste. I had absolutely no idea what I was eating, but it was so delicious that I chased the elusive pins around the dish until there were no more. I looked questioningly at Colman.
“Angulas,” he said. “Baby eels.”
“They were a surprise,” said Bradley.
“There will be a lot of surprises on this trip,” promised Colman.
“I hope our dinner doesn’t turn out to be one of them,” murmured Bradley, but Colman wasn’t listening. He was pointing to the platters on the table, saying, “The seafood here is really good,” with such a proprietary air that one might have thought that he’d personally snatched these specimens from the ocean. The food on the table actually looked more vegetable than animal, like it had been cut from a garden and not fished from the sea. The tiny squid were the size of blueberries; they were tinged with black and, when I stretched a finger out to touch them, felt as soft as peaches. Grilled sardines were stacked head to tail, like so many logs piled onto the platter. Baby octopuses, their tentacles tightly curled, had the air of prickly little roses basking in the sun, and cuttlefish were tangled into a sofrito of tomatoes and onions, looking like bittersweet growing in a meadow.
Colman picked up the nearest platter and pointed to a small, soft, almost transparent filet with brownish ridges running down the flesh. “Anybody know what this is?” he asked.
“An espardenya,” said Mark.
“Right,” said Colman. “But do you know what that is?”
“I’ll take a wild guess and assume it’s a fish,” he replied.
From Colman’s face I knew that Mark was wrong, but I couldn’t imagine what else the filet might be. So I just took a bite. It was supple and slightly sweet. “It’s good,” I said. Bradley reached for the platter.
“It’s a slug,” said Colman.
Bradley quickly redirected his hand to the grilled shrimp.
“A slug!” said Mark. “I have to taste that.” He speared a filet and bit into it. He chewed for a moment and announced, “I like it.”
Awake now, I drank some more wine. It was midnight in Barcelona, and I was eating slugs. And then, unbidden, unwelcome, a thought floated toward me: What time is it right now in Mexico? A shadow crossed my heart.
It was late when we finally left the restaurant. As we walked out the door I stood looking down the cobbled street, thinking how tired I was. It seemed weeks since I had been in bed. “I think I’ll turn in,” I said.
Alice gave me a sharp look. Did I imagine that she kicked Mark? Perhaps. But I did not imagine that Mark said firmly, “On Bradley’s first night in Europe? Impossible! This is Spain. It’s early. The bars will be open for hours.”
And I certainly did not imagine the nighttime tour of the city, through endless cocktail bars, where beautiful bartenders shook exotic liquors into fabulous potions. We tried drinks with names like pampa, Americano, sidecar. And then, somehow, we were hungry again.
“I know just the place,” said Colman, reaching into his inexhaustible knowledge of the city. He led us around a corner and down a flight of stairs into a dark, medieval basement where thick wooden beams hugged small, low tables.
We ordered champagne and local specialties: slices of bread rubbed with tomatoes and drizzled with olive oil, ham made out of duck breast, olives, and anchovies. “Try this,” said Colman, offering a platter of sliced, fried meat.
“What is it?” asked Mark.
“Try it,” urged Colman. Mark took a tentative taste. “Bull’s balls,” said Colman.
Mark glared balefully at the platter. “I have to have something that I won’t eat,” he said, taking a big gulp of wine. Sputtering, he spat it out.
“That bad?” asked Jonathan.
“No,” said Mark, “but it’s not Baby Jesus sliding down your throat in velvet slippers.” Colman laughed. I said, “Can we go to bed now?”
“No,” they replied in unison, “we’re going to look at the cathedral. They light it up at night. It’s beautiful.”
“Don’t you guys ever sleep?” I moaned. “How are you going to cook this dinner if you stay up every night?”
“We’re used to it,” said Jonathan. “Besides,” he added, as if he were about to make a logical case against sleep, “we’re in Spain.”
It was light when they finally led me back to the hotel. I fell into bed so drunk, so tired that for the first time in weeks I slept without dreaming. It did not occur to me, until much later, that keeping me up had been an act of extraordinary kindness.
* * *
“We’re meeting for cocktails at ten.” It was Alice on the phone.
“Cocktails?” I asked. “In the morning?”
“Hurry,” she said. “If you get up now you can just make it.”
Barcelona is rich in bars, and we began each day in a different one. “Why are we drinking sidecars at ten A.M.?” I asked one morning.
“To try and forget,” said Jonathan, “that we have this horrible dinner hanging over our head.” He was joking, of course, but when I thought about it afterward it seemed like a premonition. At the time I thought only that I too was trying to forget, and that alcohol was helpful.
Colman had arranged this trip with the firm determination of showing off everything Barcelona had to offer; our schedule was very full. We went to bakeries, wineries, and markets. We were endlessly eating. My body ached from lack of sleep. But the chefs seemed impervious to fatigue, and I was reminded of Wolfgang saying that he worked better when he slept less.
Wolf was now so famous that the year before, when I’d spent a week following him around the country for a story on the life of a celebrity chef, the women at the Hertz counter in Cleveland had squealed at the sight of him and treated him like a major movie star. It seemed to make no difference to him; he still worked as if demons were chasing him. He was in another city every day, cooking charity meals, creating special dinners for wealthy clients, and looking for new places to build restaurants. But although he checked in and out of hotels he rarely rumpled the beds. He snatched his sleep sitting up on airplanes, waking after a couple of hours looking depressingly refreshed. And so when Jonathan said, “If the dinner’s a disaster it won’t be because we’re tired,” I believed him.
The chefs wanted to see every site and sample every flavor. We spent hours in an olive store while the owner handed his wares across the counter. First the large obregòns, which are cured in oranges; next the tiny black, purple, and green extremañas; and then, triumphantly, the little grayish arbequines, which are the pride of Catalonia. Colman took us to visit champanerias, vinegar makers, the House of Salt Cod.
“Write this down,” said Lydia. “I just ate salt cod with Roquefort sauce. If you had ever told me that I would do such a thing, I would have told you it was impossible.”
“Write this down too,” said Mark. “Salt cod fried with honey. I can’t believe I even tasted it.”
“And this,” said Alice. “It was good.”
“But not that good,” said Jonathan.
Surrounded by their noise and banter, sated by a surfeit of food, I gradually became less numb. Sometimes two or three hours would pass when I did not think of Gavi, and most nights, when they finally allowed me to drop into bed, I slept dreamlessly. I was slowly coming back to life; I knew it would be a long time until I could be happy, but I was beginning to understand that such a time might come.
* * *
For years Barcelona had been forced to speak Spanish; now, freed from the tyranny of language, the city reveled in its own Catalan tongue. If you stopped someone to ask for directions to the Mercado de San José, he would look at you blankly, as if he had no idea what you could possibly be talking about. Ask for La Boqueria, on the other hand, and you got directions not only to the market but also to the nearby sidewalks designed by Miró.
An ornate Art Nouveau roof covers the market. It dates from the last century, but if you look around the edges you find ancient marble columns, the remains of earlier markets in much earlier times. La Boqueria is so rich in history that it feels like a great temple of food, and we all found ourselves becoming quiet as we entered its doors.
Inside, light filtered dimly down from the high ceiling, and we blinked, adjusting our eyes. “Don’t forget to make a list of what you find and where you found it,” Alice called as we fanned out past neat pyramids of fruit, spiral stacks of mushrooms, and fluffy bouquets of herbs.
At the meat counters the tiny kids were strewn with flowers, which made them look like sacrifices instead of food. The animals were so young that the butchers’ knives moved soundlessly through the soft bones. The innards were beautiful too: the tripe so clean and white it might have been spun by spiders, and the great dark blocks of congealed blood laid out like so much marble. Calves’ brains, intricate coils, looked like some exotic fungus lying on the counter. “How beautiful they are!” said Lydia, staring at the looping twists. “I want to do something with those brains at the dinner.”
Mark stood by the fish stalls, eyeing bright snapper, glistening blue mackerel, and silver sardines. “Raw fish,” he murmured, “we should do something with raw fish. That would surprise them, since Catalans always cook their fish.”
Across the aisle Alice was cooing over skinny, dark green asparagus. “We’ll buy lots and lots of them to cook,” she exclaimed. “They’re wild!” She moved to the next stack, some fat white asparagus, which she stroked tenderly. “I love their little lavender tips,” she explained, leaning over to break one off and stick it into her mouth. The vendor looked on, startled.
Jonathan was mesmerized by clams with brightly patterned shells. “They’re called Romeos,” he said, staring at them. “Aren’t they wonderful? I want to use them for the dinner.” The fish woman flirted with him, patting the shells so that all the clams seemed to stick out little red tongues. Jonathan laughed out loud and the fishmonger, delighted, did it again. Then she went behind the counter and picked up a baby. Holding her out toward Jonathan she crooned, “Mi niñiña.”
Jonathan squeezed my shoulder. Somewhere in Mexico, I thought, at this very moment, someone is holding Gavi. I hoped, with all my heart, that when she said, “Mi niñiña,” she caressed the words in the same way. My eyes filled with tears, and I looked away.
* * *
The kitchen that the city of Barcelona had selected for the chefs was tiny. It contained two burners, no equipment, and a minuscule sink that rebelled each time it was asked to swallow more than a cup of water. But it would be three more days until the chefs discovered this, and by then it would be too late. As they left the market, they were thinking big. “Colman’s bragged about us all over Barcelona,” said Alice. “Every winemaker and chef in the region is coming. The Julia Child of Spain will be there. How many courses, do you think?”
Day by day the number grew. “Remember, we don’t have a lot of time,” said Alice … just before adding a quail course to the menu.
“Let’s not go crazy,” said Jonathan. And then tacked on clams casino as a second course.
“We want to make this as foolproof as possible,” suggested Mark, increasing the courses with a poblano pesto. Still to come: the fish course, the meat course, the salad course, dessert.
The menu changed almost hourly as they discovered new foods. But as the days went on, one thing remained constant: Dessert, the chefs had agreed from the start, would be a blood-orange sorbet. “They’ll be amazed,” said Alice. “The only thing they ever do with blood oranges is use them for juice.”
But on the day before the dinner Jonathan suddenly had a terrible thought: “What if there’s no ice-cream maker?” he asked.
“Oh, there must be one,” said Mark.
“If there’s not,” said Bradley, “I’ll do it by hand.” They all turned to stare at him. “With a rubber spatula,” he explained, “and a stainless steel bowl set over rock salt and ice.”
* * *
There was no ice-cream maker. There was barely a bowl. As the chefs hauled their purchases into the kitchen they looked at one another with dawning horror. Five people could not possibly work in that kitchen at the same time; five people could barely breathe in there at the same time. The dinner, clearly, was doomed.
“How are we going to cook six courses for forty people on two burners?” asked Alice, staring at the stove.
“We’ll grill,” said Jonathan.
“But what are you going to grill on?” she asked.
“We’ll build a grill,” said Mark. “I’ll use cobblestones if I have to.”
“But it’s starting to rain,” said Alice.
“Don’t worry,” said Jonathan, “I can grill in any weather.”
They had left behind kitchens stuffed with the latest equipment and staffed with eager assistants. At home they had minions who prepped the food, who cleaned and chopped and shredded. Not one of them had washed a pot in years. Now they were on the far side of the ocean staring at two burners, one small and slightly clogged sink, two pots, one pan, and not nearly enough room. They were staring at disaster. America’s most famous chefs took a deep collective breath, pulled on their whites, and went to work.
Bradley commandeered a corner of the kitchen. Knife flashing, he began boning quail; within minutes he was covered in blood. As he finished each bird, Jonathan swept the skeleton into one of the pots for stock; Lydia used the other pot to poach brains. Mark assessed the situation, realized that there was no room for him, and went outside to build a grill.
“I found the most beautiful baby spinach,” said Alice, irritably inspecting her purchases, “but when we tried to buy it the woman took this ancient stuff from the back. We tried to get her to sell us the good stuff, but she said it was only for display.” Alice gathered up the entire heap, dumped it into the garbage, and turned to the remaining greens. “The asparagus is bitter,” she lamented. “The beans aren’t very good. There goes one course. We’re not going to have enough.”
“Alice, Alice,” crooned Jonathan. He was now shaking garlic in a pan. The aroma rose up and filled the tiny kitchen. “It’s okay.”
“Where am I going to sauté the brains?” asked Lydia. In one smooth move Jonathan dumped the garlic out and handed the pan to Lydia.
“I’ll put the garlic in the oven,” he said. As she took the pan with one hand, her other was already reaching for the oil. They were beginning to move in the same cadence.
“Attention grillmasters,” said Mark, standing in the doorway with a puddle forming beneath his feet. “We’ve got a grill.” He shook his soggy hair. “That’s the good news. The bad news is, it’s pouring.”
Alice blanched. “There goes another course,” she said.
“Don’t worry,” said Jonathan, briefly squeezing her shoulder. “I told you. I can grill in any weather.”
“In this?” she demanded, pointing at Mark, who had squeezed up to the counter, where he was dripping all over Bradley.
“Pray,” he said.
Mark removed his knife from the case and changed the tempo in the room. He and Bradley stood shoulder to shoulder, their knives flashing to a different beat. Mark’s was a staccato tattoo that transformed a solid chunk of tuna into a mountain of chopped flesh. He chopped chilies and cilantro and mixed them into the fish. As he squeezed limes over the mixture the aroma in the room changed, becoming piquant and almost tropical.
“Good thing we decided on tuna tartare,” he said. “At least we have something that doesn’t need cooking.”
“But we’ve got to toast the bread to put it on,” said Alice, “and we’ve got to hurry; the guests are beginning to arrive.” She pulled open the oven door, and smoke poured into the room.
“We forgot the garlic!” she coughed, peering through the haze, which now enveloped everyone. “Can’t anything go right?”
“Alice, Alice,” said Jonathan, starting into the refrain, “it’s fine.” He pulled out the garlic and began pawing through it as Alice knelt beneath him, toasting bread. She handed the bread to Mark, who had to reach around Jonathan while avoiding Lydia, who was still sautéing brains. The four of them were standing in smoke, occupying a space no larger than a shower stall, but the first course had gone out to the guests and they could hear the applause of the crowd. An air of palpable relief ran through the room. And then Lydia let out a groan.
“We’re almost out of olive oil!” she cried.
“Oh no,” said Alice, standing up too fast and nearly upsetting the pan. “I can’t believe we didn’t buy enough.”
“The great chefs of America!” said Jonathan. He began to laugh, and as they all joined in there was a moment of near hysteria. Then it was over. Lydia scattered capers into the hot oil; they burst into bloom, becoming crisp little flowers.
“Two courses down,” cried Alice, relief evident in her voice as the brains went into the dining room. She picked up a bucket of shrimp and called, “Somebody peel these,” as she sent it flying through the air. The confidence of the gesture stunned me; who did she think would catch it?
It was Lydia who held out her hand and grabbed the bucket. With one easy motion she dumped the shrimp out on the counter and began pulling off the heads. The chefs had all caught the rhythm now, moving in a kind of kitchen ballet that did not waste a single gesture. They had become a single ten-armed creature, thinking on its feet with a common goal: to get through the night.
The olive oil held out; the rain stopped. The creature worked silently, piling vegetables, beans, peppers, and clams onto the salad plates, dressing them, getting them out the door.
“It’s colorful,” said Jonathan. “It’s unusual.”
“And it’s gone,” said Alice, watching the last plate disappear into the dining room. Without a word Mark and Lydia went outside to grill quail. Inside, Jonathan reduced stock on one burner to make a sauce while Alice stood next to him, shaking artichokes and potatoes over the other.
“We could have used that spinach,” said Alice, unhappily inspecting the final arrangement. “It’s too brown.”
The plates were not pretty, but that was a minor detail. The chefs were gritting it out, trying to get the food cooked and the evening to end. There was not quite enough quail to go around—every chef’s worst nightmare—but they simply rearranged the plates and made it work. The ordeal was almost over.
Bradley was setting the pace now, his spatula hitting the side of a stainless steel bowl with a relentless thwack, thwack, thwack, a vibration reverberating through the kitchen. The beat was strong and so compelling that when he stopped, everything else did too.
In the sudden ringing silence Alice dipped a finger into the sorbet. We watched her face. “Nothing’s right tonight,” she said.
Jonathan took a taste. “Terrible,” he agreed. And then in an instant they had pulled together, desperately trying to make the dish into something they could serve. They macerated strawberries in Muscatel and tumbled them onto the plates.
“We could make circles of blood oranges and put them around the edges,” suggested Lydia. She was already slicing as she spoke.
* * *
The guests applauded. They were polite. “It is so interesting,” said the Julia Child of Spain, “to see our own products used in such different ways.”
“That was a terrible meal,” said Alice under her breath. She took a bow.
“It could have been worse,” I whispered back, “under the circumstances.”
“No,” murmured Jonathan, “it was really bad. Accept it. That was no fun.”
Lydia, the optimist, did not even lower her voice. “I had a good time,” she said. “I liked working together. We fought for it.” She looked around at the group and added, “We did our best. Sometimes that is all you can do. And then you move on.”
* * *
The rain had ended, and a gentle mist was rising off the streets when we left. As we walked through the haze we could see that we shared the sidewalks with prostitutes wearing nothing but pantyhose and pumps. In any other city in the world this would have seemed surreal, but framed by Barcelona’s fantastic architecture, the women seemed to be appropriately dressed.
We were very hungry; we had worked all night and eaten nothing. But it was so late that even the bars had stopped serving food, and all we could find were flaccid french fries and pallid pizza in an all-night joint. It was our last night in Barcelona, and we had cooked one terrible meal and were eating a worse one. But somehow, we were happy. We had fought for it. We had done our best.
* * *
“I want to ask a question,” said Colman. The sun was coming up, and we all looked blearily across at him. “Why did you come?”
Bradley said for adventure and Jonathan, for the sheer craziness of it all. Lydia had wanted to work with Alice, and Alice had liked the group.
Mark, of course, had had a loftier goal. “I came,” he said, “because we need to prove to the Europeans that American cuisine has arrived.” He paused for a moment and then added, “And because the thing that gives American cooking its strength is our ability to share ideas and work together.” We kept looking at him expectantly, and he finally conceded, “Okay, and also because I thought it would be fun.”
Colman turned to me. I knew he had been hoping that we would say we had come to learn about Catalan cooking, and I didn’t want to disappoint him.
But that wasn’t the truth, and it was too early, or too late, to lie. “When I got on the plane,” I said slowly, “I didn’t really know why I was coming. But I do now. I needed to find out that sometimes even your best is not good enough. And that in those times you have to give it everything you’ve got. And then move on.”
* * *
It had been a short trip. It had been forever. When I got home the house seemed less empty and Michael less like a stranger. I was filled with a strange serenity.
“You’re crazy,” said my mother when I told her what I thought lay behind this extraordinary feeling. “It’s all been too much for you. Have you seen a doctor?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t need to. I know.”
“How late are you?” she asked.
“One day,” I said.
“Ruthie,” she lamented, “stop it. When would you have gotten pregnant?”
“When Michael and I were in the Napa Valley,” I said, certain that it was true.
“It’s just wishful thinking,” my mother insisted.
“I think I’ll go get one of those home pregnancy kits,” I said dreamily.
“Yes,” she replied, “please. Get it over with quickly. The sooner you find out the truth, the less disappointed you will be.”
My doctor said much the same thing when I called her. “Those home pregnancy kits are very unreliable.” She sighed as if she wished she could wipe them all off the market. “You might as well come in and let us give you a real test.”
That one was positive too, but she remained wary. “Don’t get your hopes up,” she warned. “You’re forty-one years old. The chances that you will carry this baby to term are very slim. You’ve been through a lot. If I were you, I wouldn’t tell anyone about this. Not even Michael.”
“Of course not,” I said. Then I got in my car and drove straight to Michael’s office.
“What are you doing here?” he asked when he saw me. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” I replied. “For the first time in a very long time, nothing is wrong.”
“So why have you come?”
“To tell you that we’re going to have a baby.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
This time I had absolutely no doubts.
FRIED CAPERS AND CALVES’ BRAINS WITH SHERRY BUTTER SAUCE
I keep telling my son, Nick, that he really ought to try these; that they are, somehow, mixed up with his destiny. So far I haven’t been able to convince him of this fact. But then, he’s only eleven.
The brains are almost entirely texture—like savory marshmallows in a crisp crust. Tossed with salty capers and drizzled with a sweet, buttery sherry sauce, they play tricks in your mouth. I make them whenever things are going badly. They’re a lot of work, but they’re worth it. They remind me that life is full of surprises—and that there is always hope.
1 pound calves’ brains
6 cups water, plus additional salted water for soaking
1 1/2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1 small onion, quartered
1 medium carrot, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/2 celery stalk, cut into 1-inch pieces
2 sprigs fresh parsley
1/2 small bay leaf
1/8 teaspoon dried thyme
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
5 black peppercorns
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups fresh bread crumbs
3/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons large bottled capers, drained
salt and paper for seasoning
1/3 cup medium-dry sherry
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice or to taste
Accompaniment: lemon wedges
Rinse the brains under cold running water in a colander and transfer them to a bowl of salted cold water to cover by 1 inch. Let the brains soak for 30 minutes; then drain them in a colander and carefully remove the surrounding thin clear membrane and external blood vessels with your fingers.
While the brains are soaking, simmer the remaining 6 cups water with the vinegar, onion, carrot, celery, parsley, bay leaf, thyme, kosher salt, and peppercorns in a 5-quart pot for 15 minutes. Bring the liquid to a boil, add the brains, and simmer gently, covered, for 20 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to transfer the brains to a clean colander. Cool completely.
Put one lobe of the brains in the middle of a piece of plastic wrap and gather the edges of the plastic wrap to form a tight purse. Tightly twist the ends of the plastic wrap so the plastic fits snugly around the brains, folding the ends of the plastic wrap under the purse to prevent them from unraveling. Wrap the remaining lobes in the same manner and chill for 1 hour, or until they are firmer.
Whisk together the egg and salt in a bowl. Put the bread crumbs in a shallow bowl. Unwrap the brains and cut them crosswise into 1/2-inch-thick pieces. Dip two pieces of brains at a time in the egg, letting the excess drip off, and dredge them in the bread crumbs to coat them, lightly patting the crumbs so they adhere to the brains. Transfer the slices, as coated, to a plate.
Heat the oil in a heavy 10-inch skillet over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking and fry the capers, stirring occasionally, until they open up like flowers and are crisp, 2 to 3 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to transfer the capers to paper towels to drain. Immediately fry the brains, in batches without crowding, until golden brown on both sides, 1 to 2 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to transfer the brains to paper towels to drain. Season the brains with salt and pepper and keep them warm in a low oven.
Drain the oil from the skillet and wipe it clean with a paper towel. Add the sherry and simmer until it’s reduced by half. Whisk in the butter, and cook over moderate heat until just incorporated. Remove the skillet from the heat and whisk in the lemon juice. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Serve the brains sprinkled with fried capers and drizzled with sauce.
Serves 6 to 8.