I had a vivid dream last night. There were four of us in a car driving around an Italian city. Most likely Florence since I was there not that long ago. There was a driver who I didn’t know, an Italian from the course, my brother (who lives in Italy from time to time) and myself, and each of us were making tomato soup as we drove around.
My order of work is ready to go. I am making Crab, Tomato and Ginger Tart and Strawberry Ice Cream. I am determined to improve on last week’s pastry and can’t wait to get my hands on those crabs. But I have to. We are waiting on the fisherman to deliver them, so the order of work goes in the hens’ bucket. I start by making my pastry and chilling it and getting the syrup on for the ice cream.
Ice cream making runs in my family. My grandfather had an ice cream parlour in my home town and apparently made exceptionally good, creamy gelatos. Sadly he not only died before I was born, but also before he’d told anybody else how he made it, so there ended the tradition. I’m ready to step up to the plate though.
The strawberries are frozen so I need to thaw them out first. I whip my cream, but I get carried away and look down to discover something resembling cottage cheese. I start again. Ice cream loses a lot of sweetness in the freezing, and on tasting mine it seems not quite sweet enough (maybe because the strawberries were frozen and not fresh) so I add a little icing sugar to the mix.
By the time the crabs arrive my ice cream is in the sorbetiere and I have lined my flan tin with pastry. The problem is it is now about half past ten. Not only this but the local crab population heard something was up and went into hiding, so we only have six in our kitchen. A volunteer is needed to cook them. I waste no time. The water is tepid (it can’t be any warmer or they won’t be put to sleep humanely) and has about half a kilo of salt in it that helps bring out the sweetness of the meat.
It takes forever to heat up. They eventually reach boiling point and I pour away most of the liquid and put the lid back on to steam them for the remainder of the cooking time. I am now blind baking my flan tin. The crabs are cooked (the claw comes away from the body easily) and we now have to wait for them to cool down enough to be handled. Whilst all this is going on I am making my tart filling, concassing tomatoes, grating ginger, breaking eggs etc.
I snap off the crab claws and legs. I turn the crab upside down and ram him against the worktop to loosen the body from the shell. I take out the dead man’s fingers and pull away the beak and skull like sack. I cleave the main body in half and poke out meat with my fingers. It smells good. No-one’s watching. It tastes better. A lot of people find the brown meat too pungent. I don’t, so I get my hand in the shell and scoop it all out. I crack the claws and the sweetest most delicious meat is revealed. I want to just wade in here and gorge myself but there is a tart than needs filling. I repeat the process on the next one. By the time the filled tart goes in it is noon.
The ice cream tasted good. It wasn’t heart-stopping stuff, but it was good. Unfortunately it looked shit. I forgot to chill the serving plate and so it began melting almost instantly, cunningly camouflaging itself among the coulis. As soon as it had been marked I whisked it away to warmer climes, in the pit of my stomach.
I had an errand to run at lunch so didn’t have time to eat and had to leave a teacher to take my tart out of the oven. She promised to keep a slice back for me. I spent the break wondering. After all my chat last week about the sacred crab, and wanting to do a dead one justice, had I? The tart looked good when it went in the oven. It was well seasoned and I had put extra ginger in. The pastry wasn’t great mind - a little wet and a little thick.
I came back to see a healthy slice on my worktop. There was a lovely, even scattering of colour from the meat, the tomatoes and the chopped chives. It was a good texture too, much better than last week’s quiche. Now this wouldn’t have been my first choice of crab dish. Maybe a simple dressing and served with brown toast and butter or something that would let the crab be the star. But it’s not my choice. I had a recipe to carry out, and I carried it out. Well. The crab Gods would be proud. The ice cream Gods can wait for another day.
As for my tomato soup dream, well, there was a lot of it being made today. Some amongst us feel that the recipe has too much salt and sugar. And butter for that matter. In the dream, we drove around making our own soups, then at the end we poured them all together into a big bowl. It seemed pointless in the context of the dream, but is practical, and practised, at lunchtime in the school.
Everyone has a responsibility to follow the recipe, but there are some things that contravene deep held, almost religious, beliefs. For the fellow student in my dream, the sugar was a step too far. He left it out. The tomato soup Gods can judge him on what he poured in the vat. Just at that moment, when you relinquish control and add your creation to everyone else’s, just look up at them for a second. If you can live with yourself, then so can they.
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