(from 2013) (And long before the movie, PIG)
"Michigan Man’s Tastes
Get Him Into Trouble"
by Patti Abbott
Daniel was not a gastronome at birth, but it wasn’t long
before the word was applicable. Stories detailing incidents of his superior
palate as a toddler were numerous. He learned his skills at the side of the finest
cook he’d ever met—his mother.
“Too much rosemary?” she’d ask him before serving the
holiday dinner.
The aroma of roasted poultry was intoxicating to her young son,
even if the chicken was a tad over-infused with garlic. She held the fork out,
having stolen the smallest tidbit from the underside of a breast.
“More lemon. And a pinch more marjoram.”
“Brilliant,” she said, after tasting it.
Daniel’s early reading matter was the work of James Beard,
and by twelve, he’d successfully replicated Beards’ recipes. He taught himself
French to study the work of Escoffier, the author of Le Guide Culinaire, and inventor
of the five mother sauces. Daniel aspired to the title bestowed on his mentor: roi des cuisiners et cuisinier des rois.(king
of the chefs and chef of the kings).
This was unlikely however since he
rarely cooked for anyone other than himself.
Eventually Daniel came on the idea of using the finest
ingredients available to create a contemporary version of the five sauces. Quelle
drole to confine oneself to ingredients as prosaic as butter, garlic and
cheese. He would turn Escoffier’s codification on its ear.
The first four sauces were unparalleled successes. His fruit
sauce featured Dansuke watermelons and Yubari cantaloupes, the world’s most expensive
melons. A curry was composed of Devon crab, Beluga caviar, Scottish lobster,
and quail eggs. A topping composed of caviar and goji berries made his eyes
roll with pleasure, and his penultimate sauce, a dessert concoction, used 28
different imported cocoas, some formulated personally for him by chocolatiers.
His final sauce would use white truffles, available only a
few months each year. The best were found in Italy, and especially in
Alba. Traditionally the truffles had been ferreted out by pigs that,
mysteriously, had the nose for it. But pigs also had the inclination to gobble
down the white gold, sometimes destroying the entire yield. So pigs had mostly
been replaced by dogs that were satisfied to feast on pedestrian treats rather
than the truffles.
“I should like to go along,” Daniel told the importer at the
Eastern Market in Detroit.
“To the airport to pick up your shipment?”
“To Roccafluvione.”
This was the town in the Le Marche region his supplier identified as a viable
source.
“You mean to the marketplace there?”
Daniel drew an impatient breath. “No. I want to hunt them
myself. I should like to smell the earth, to inhale the scent I’ve read about
since childhood.” He paused. “And I want to hunt with pigs rather than the
dogs. I have a preference for traditional methods.”
He’d waited a long time for this day and he’d
be damned it some mutt was going to tarnish the image of striding amidst the
oak trees, pig in hand.
“It’s mostly forbidden,” said his importer. “You’ll have to
make special arrangements.”
“I’m prepared to do whatever it takes.”
Daniel opened his
wallet. And eventually his bank account.
And so it was on a dark October day that Daniel and his
guide, Bruno, and the Marco, the pig, set out into the hills.
“No one knows you are here?”
Daniel shook his head.
“You must never speak of this excursion to anyone. Normally I’d ask
you to wear a blindfold,” his guide said in excellent English. “But I doubt you
will make a second trip.”
“No,” Daniel agreed. “This will be my only outing.
Truthfully I am not fond of fungi. They tend to disagree with me, in fact.” His
stomach was already rumbling.
“Then why this trip? We have perfected the shipment of
truffles, you know.”
Daniel explained his lifelong desire to hunt for the truffles
that would complete his final sauce.
The man nodded knowingly. “I detest red wine. Yet I always drink a glass
or two at my local tavern. The owner makes a point of giving me the best red
wine in the house because of my profession,” he said, waving his arm around. “I
know it’s good, but I’d much prefer beer.”
The pig, trudged on, only
occasionally giving a half-hearted snort. He was very large and far uglier than
Daniel had imagined.
“You will know you
are amongst the truffles when we arrive. It will remind you of locker rooms
back in school. Feet, sweat, testosterone, earth.” Bruno drew a breath and his
chest expanded. “Marco has the area’s finest sense of smell. Much better than
those damned dogs.”
Daniel smiled.
“So you’re going to eat only enough to see
that this sauce is up to snuff, and then never touch them again,” Bruno said,
after a while.
“That’s about the size of it,” Daniel said. “Just enough to
ascertain I have met my objective.”
The
oak trees towered above them, the forest growing denser as they walked.
At last, Bruno glanced at Daniel, indicating with his
eyes that the rope had been tugged by the eager pig. Using the stout
stick, he
made Marco back away. The three of them stopped. A nice stand of oaks
towered
over a pirate’s bounty of the white gold.
The odor was overpowering, and Daniel suddenly felt
light-headed. Perhaps it was not just eating fungi that made him ill: it could
also be the smell. Without warning, he plunged headlong into the swell of
truffles.
The pig, angry at this unexpected blanketing of his greatest joy, jerked loose of the
rope, immediately gobbling away at both Daniel and the truffles. Within
seconds, a piece of Daniel and a piece of the white truffles co-mingled. A
piece of leg, a piece of thigh. And so it went.
Bruno stood dumbfounded, trying to decide what to do. There
was little choice, he thought, looking at the earth beneath him. Knowing the
trouble this affair would cause, he and his pig, beaten hard with a stick, ran all
the way home.