Saturday, August 09, 2008 Caviar, my last food frontier By Oberkhok Sira-sira store
I HIT the panic button.
For the life of me, I can’t eat caviar — even if I had the hidden wealth to buy the costly delicacy.
I was in a party midweek. The hors d’oeuvres — awr durvs or or’ders but not “horse de overs” or “hoarse d’ovreys” — were wheat squares topped with caviar and a dot of sour cream, or deviled eggs topped with caviar and mayonnaise, and so on.
Yes, classy.
Each time the waiter passed by, I’d excuse myself to go to the restroom, but not before I’d snatch a glass of champagne that went with the canapés.
That was a lot of visits to the john, and a fast way to get tipsy.
Call me a caveman, a brute, a country bumpkin, an ignoramus — throw the entire sink at me — I don’t care. Caviar is the last food frontier I have to conquer.
Weird, don’t you think. I’ve eaten food considered exotic. There’s no problem with sushi, or raw tuna cubes marinated in a vinegar dressing. These dishes bring out the bard in me when drowned with frosty pale pilsen straight from the bottle.
Spicy blood soup (dinugoan sounds yucky when translated in English, doesn’t it?) has no quarrel with my taste buds.
I’ve eaten an entire zoo.
I’ve dined on chevron, wild boar, lamb, rabbit, horse, venison, quail, dove, turkey, monkey, snake, turtle, dog, and the boring chicken (native, or otherwise), pork and beef.
But why don’t I like caviar (fish eggs)?
Chicken, duck and quail eggs were OK until the threat of bad cholesterol. I’ve shunned them. Caviar? I shun them, too.
I envy the French. The AFP reported on how the French love escargot (snails or gastropods).
Cebu has edible snails, like aninikad, sisi, saang and kuhol. So I’ve been exposed to seafood except for caviar.
Maybe to increase their exposure to the taste, a couple of snail farmers from Soissons, in the Picardie region northeast of Paris, decided “to roll two delicacies into one: their snail caviar, called De Jaeger.”
Dominique and Sylvie Pierru quit their old jobs in 2004 to start “their snail farm and start work on a recipe for caviar.” They have a stock of 50,000 gastropods fed with herbs and cereals. They have perfected the harvesting process and preparing them for bottling. It’s a secret.
The way the AFP described the caviar made it sound better than Viagra or Ecstasy: “small, cream-colored pearls that burst on the palate to reveal what the producers describe as ‘subtle autumn flavors with woody notes’.”
Joel Schaeffer, a top chef from Luxembourg, said the taste is “woody, salty, with a hint of rosemary, well suited to nutty ingredients such as truffle.”
You need culinary savvy to serve De Jaeger: “warm in a celeriac soup, or with a thin sliver of truffle, in a cocktail glass layered with creamy celeriac puree and a milk and courgette mousse — garnished with coriander and toasted rosemary brioche.” And of course, champagne.
De Jaeger retails for 80 euros ($115 or P4,945) per 50 grams.
No, let me have champagne instead. When I’m very full of bubbles I will rave about caviar. (ober.khok@yahoo.com)
