Month: February 2020

When I lived in Boston and Cambridge, my dentist, the redoubtable Racowsky, in addition to caring fastidiously for my teeth, introduced me to the simpler pleasures of the neighborhood adjacent to his. His office technically was in a converted wharf building on what had been the inner Boston harbor, the neglected Boston “waterfront.” In the late 60s, urban renewal saw the start of a long revitalization project – essentially the gentrification of what had for even longer been an abandoned part of the landscape, immediately adjacent to a thriving urban ghetto. The Italian North End, even in the 80s, had for decades been a mecca for tourists because of its many vital historical sites dating to the American Revolution, and for foodie tourism, because of the proliferation of Italian restaurants, bakeries, and cafes.

But the North End was also, and had long been, a living, highly vibrant neighborhood for its many residents. It was an enclave for a native population made up of first, second, and third-generation Italo-Americans who took enormous pride in their quarter, sequestered, in an ironic way more or less perserved, by the barrier of the infamous “Central Artery.” This had been a controversial project costing vast sums, planned in the late 1940s and early 50s, constituting an elevated limited access expressway intended to make access to the city from the northern and southern suburbs more expedient, while easing significant traffic in the cramped streets of downtown, which had first been laid down when Boston was an important colonial center and capital of what had started as the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Instead, the “Artery” became jammed with an overabundance of traffic, usually stalled high above the teeming streets for most of the daylight hours. In the meantime, it also saw, precipitated really, the obliteration of the West End of Boston, an ethnic residential center, and, in its day, also a vibrant neighborhood for wave after wave of immigrants, as the decades of the nineteenth century passed one to another.

[I’ve decided to insert an editorial interpolation here – decidedly and consciously a meta-commentary – about how this evolving elaboration might have occurred, perhaps, at best, pre-verbally, though I’m not sure how we refer to the mode of interiority that relates to how we form our conscious thoughts, and I will not get bogged down in a meditation on “voice” or “words” or any essentially nihilistic Wittgensteinian dead-end aperçus concerning “that whereof we cannot speak” – wherein some readers may be wondering how a very simple recipe, demonstrably so, especially for the prescient reader-cook if all you do is look at the highly resolved photograph of the product, an assemblage of not much more than cooked eggs and potatoes on two slices of toast, probably – in the illustration, the proverbial “beauty shot,” overly toasted to some tastes – has ended up threatening to be a short history of late nineteenth century through mid-twentieth century immigration movements in the metropolitan Boston area. As well as what might, at any moment, turn into a screed on the monstrous cluelessness of so much American urban renewal. And I will say unto you, wondering or not, this is how I tell it.

Even the simplest of dishes is invested with a whole universe of associational facts and matters of chronologically ordered sequences of events, and without that particular and peculiar sequence which led to my consumption of my first potato and egg sandwich crafted at the grill of some now anonymous Italian grocery/delicatessen at the fringes of the, let’s face it, perpetually mean streets of the North End, and the series of similarly concocted luncheon sandwiches the consumption of which culminated in my internally persuasive perception that I had mastered a sense of how to craft such a rough delicacy myself, the recipe and the product of following might have ended up a decidedly different entity, substantively, sensibly, and gastronomically. And not only that, but to bestow upon myself, through temerity and an innately incalculable level of confidence, the idea that I could formulate a recipe or receipt the following of which would permit any but the most inept of cooks to replicate the sandwich sufficiently well not only to satisfy a hunger for such a means of satiation, but to essay further, repeated, attempts until the reader has achieved a level of a sense of mastery to permit adding this receipt to whatever repertoire of dishes they call upon in the need.

But, to the point, suffice it to say, I don’t believe even this highly interpreted – not to mention idiosyncratically so – and derivative formulation could not have resulted in the form it takes, virtually for sure here on the channels of the internet, and literally, however fortune and the specific qualities (or lack of them) of the ingredients the reader has assembled have pre-determined aspects of the results of concocting this delicacy (a word derived from delicatessen, not surprisingly a word of either German or Dutch origin, further derived from the, let’s face it, more French sounding, well, no other way around it, French, word for “delicacy,” which I have taken to mean, always, having grown up with what is now indelicately called a largely secularized Jewish upbringing – more cultural than religious, more gustatory than liturgical – not so much dainty foods, as foods that require some care in preparation, if not as well in the consumption, and not the least of the characteristic qualities is the savory aspect, however simple, even in a sample size tid-bit. I mean, at the very least, it’s not a bludgeon-sized St. Louis pork rib, done to a turn and dripping barbecue sauce onto a sheaf of paper towels, let’s say cheap paper towels, held roughly in the hand around the already gnawed bone; there is nothing dainty about this sandwich, but it also is not only a step or two above mere raw paleolithic sustenance, but much more, so much much more).

And so, I submit to you, every bite is not only informed somehow, let’s say spiritually, and let’s not get silly about it, as well as seasoned and made more savory, however subtly, by every moment of the immigrant experience in the aggregate: every instant of striving, ambition, frustration, anger, triumph, longing, and fulfillment. I would like to ascribe the accretive aspect of how the product of this recipe manifests perceptible, if not strictly analytical separable, qualities it could have acquired only through the passage of time, of history I mean to say, and spiritually imbuing the result with an ineffable strain of definition that is differentiable from some other, in all other respects virtually inseparable set of qualities that are similar but not precisely, not minutely, the same – occurring a block over and a week later, if you will – but I won’t in the end talk about these matters spiritually. I am innately ultimately driven by a faith, if in anything, in science, and also, and likely more importantly, because mentioning anything spiritual will get me into a very trying position vis à vis certain friends of mine, whose relationships I do not mean to or want to disturb about a matter too many people, wholly unrelated to my life, might consider a relentlessly trivial matter. An inconsequentiality. In other words, not Chinatown, but merely a potato and egg sandwich. For some people nothing at all depends on a potato and egg sandwich. Unlike what does depend on a red wheelbarrow.

So I’ll stick to concrete matters, especially when the ingredient list is so short.

Like the French omelet and, more pertinently, like the Italian frittata, there is a whole tradition, if not a sub-cuisine, a genre unto itself, of avian eggs whisked into a simple aerated batter, and fried with, more often than not, animal fats, in a pan with bits of whatever vegetables, fresh, and perhaps even on the way out, but still quite flavorful and nutritious, that have been cooked first, for softening, tenderizing, and caramelization and which become immersed in the emulsive and binding embrace of the eggs allowed to cook to a soft doneness, firmer than scrambled, and more tender than a custard—because yes, if you are tempted to add cheese, preferably grated, any cheese really would do, but provolone and cheddar and swiss are the usual choices in the salumeria-derived original, you should go ahead and do so.]

The potato, native in terms of modern botanical history essentially to what are now called “the Americas,” were first introduced to Europe by the Spanish, who brought them from the Andes (where some 3000 species originate) and who somehow or other first propagated them not on the mainland of the continent, but on the Canary Islands (among their posssessions at the time), and from around the start of the 17th century they proliferated and were added to the cuisines of the usual suspect nations. There are not many recipes which feature, never mind highlight, the potato as a significant ingredient in Italian cuisines, but there are a fair number of recipes in the authoritative, if not canonical, cookery book in English of what the title of the book calls “Classic Italian” preparations by the estimable Marcella Hazan. And in fact, one of these is a frittata featuring, in a reduced set of key ingredients, besides the requisite eggs, not much more than onions and potatoes.

For me, the key factor in preparation, though not out of the ordinary in the way of the preparation of most versions of this versatile dish, is that the potatoes are cooked in oil to a specified level of crispiness in advance.

Precisely as with this sandwich recipe. If either dish, but especially this lowly sandwich, deserves elevation to a place in some taxonomy of dishes worth bothering about, however little actual bother their concoction represents measured in energy expended, it is because it falls under the category of what do with leftovers. Who hasn’t prepared more potatoes than needed for other purposes for more formal dishes and been left with a small bowlful that sits in the fridge, waiting for the inspired and sudden yearning for a satisfaction that fits neatly and trimly between two slices of bread?