Caramel Pears

Whether out of laziness, haste, aesthetics, or as a gift to my wheat-allergic brother, I’ve decided crusts are for the birds. Or, more likely, for the grain moths. Or the rats. Or the dogs. I think my practice of making tarte tatin with out any crust evolved in the opposite order of that stated above: first as a gift, then because I liked the idea, then because I had only half an hour to make dessert for a dinner party, and finally because I don’t know what else to do.

Seriously. I enter the supermarket in a mental fog, and mumble to myself “dessert…” As sure as a wallpaper pattern my answer to this nonquestion moves from apples to apples to apples. I stare at the Golden Delicious, a little hesitant: is there something else? Not really, but this time I went for pears. A stain on the wallpaper. Same thing, different fruit. Peel them, quarter them, settle them in a hot pan of sugar and butter, boil them.

Until I tried pears, I didn’t want to write anything about the sweet paradigm I had stumbled into. There was something magic about how well the caramel-bathed apples came out each time, with so little effort. I wanted to keep my little loophole secret. This meant, of course, that I harbored a pride about it, which reared its ugly head when I brought my apples (mine, mine) out of the house. One of my hosts, biting into one of these apples, exclaimed in pleasure that it was one of the finest pears he had ever tasted. He was right--soft and stewed in sugar, it did taste like pear. I always hate any exchange of recipes, and especially when they come from myself. But there I was, specifying with gross excitement that the caramel takes six, not five minutes to develop. I could’ve used a bubbling, superheated pool of caramel to jump into.

Mortified, and stuck in a stupefyingly retrograde metaphysics, I had to advance from seeming to the real thing: I had to use pears. I should have known that what tantalized was glimpsing another flavor just on the horizon. To go directly toward the glimpse was as inevitable as it was misguided. It all would have been okay, I keep telling myself, had I used more pears, or less sugar. When it was just cool enough to try, my brother and I bit into this fruity, saucy mess as if it were heaven. It was. We had another bite. Our eyes bulged, and we yearned for water and other flavorlessness. While we had a hard time staying away from all of the preceding plates of buttery apples, more than a few bites of these pears could not be managed. They were too sweet.

Hence crusts. Still, the two of us finished the plate off in a few days.

Tacos at Agave

If you have any sense, I won’t be able to convince you that the tacos at Agave are anything other than mediocre. But once, under the influence of oxytocin and a little alcohol, I ate tacos there that can only be described as transcendent. I objected to the aesthetics of them--the repackaging of Mexican food as self-consciously healthful and mild--yet I could not deny the sheer pleasure of biting into one. There are advantages to Mexico as discovered by yuppies over Mexico as imported nostalgically over the border by immigrants. For one, the meat was cooked perfectly, meltingly, rather than grilled or fried to a crisp. Wait, sorry, that’s the only thing. But that went a long way, and everything else was good. The salsa, while it lacked heat, had the sharp and sweet flavors of cilantro and fresh tomatoes of the non-insipid variety. The tortillas were at once crisp and soft, not stale, damp, and falling apart.

I didn’t think about any of this then--I was too surprised at how thoroughly I enjoyed it. I had scoffed at this place every time I passed its signage that proudly displays a plant as if it’s a revelation. Imagine if it had been named “Cabbage”. Though perhaps it should have been. There’s plenty of cabbage on the menu, and the only agave for sale is in the form of tequila. You may need it, if their sunny attempts to transport you to Mexico fail and you’re forced to face the food under the garish grey light of these latitudes in winter.

These transcendent tacos, they are only known by one other person, the same who I lunched with. It was pushing our luck to go back to Agave after sharing such gustatory delight there. It is to the cook’s credit that the tacos deluded us into thinking that they emanated from some ontic stability, to which we could return at our leisure. We did. The tacos literally fell apart in my hands, despite their wet innards being quarantined by two tortillas. The tortillas had come out of a bag, probably one that was at least two days old. The moldy aftertaste came from precisely that. The foundation on which tacos are built had sloughed onto our plates. What was left?

First we denied anything was amiss. Then we balked, and, finally, we rationalized. That first halcyon visit, we had come at around four when hardly anyone had been here (this second time it was 1pm). The cook must have had the time to take real care with the food, and probably there had been a different cook. Maybe they normally use fresh tortillas, but ran out today. Yes, yes, the lunchtime rush, the cook, that must be it. The experience, no, it was real, surely.

Meanwhile, we were busy with the wait staff, maintaining our own delusion, or maybe the restaurant’s, I’m really not sure any more. How is everything? Oh, good--no, delicious! The performance of enthusiasm that flares up in the friction between professionally doting waiters and polite customers can get a bit scary. The line between cheeriness and violence feels thin. The same unnaturally widened eyes could belong to someone yelling “good, I’m glad you like it!” at you or to someone stabbing you with a chef’s knife. I’m grateful whenever the fervor dies down.

Then came the flan. It more or less broke my mind. It came with a purple orchid, which my companion optimistically took as a personal gift from our cute waitress. If the flan was a part of this gift, it was the most mixed signal I’ve ever received. Of course, as it is with mixed signals, I wasn’t sure what part of it came from myself. Settling a slightly warm chunk of creamy custard onto my tongue with a spoon, I was given a wave of nausea. Whence? The texture was lovely, the flavor was at once strong caramel and smooth milk, and it was sweet but not overpoweringly sweet. I put another morsel in my mouth, and felt instantly gravitated toward the floor. It was perfect, yet I was not inhaling it, I was choking it down. I wanted to throw it back up, yet I ate my entire share of it. Our waitress glowingly asked us “how is the flan?” I must have looked stunned and indecisive, like a squirrel getting run down by a car. Thankfully, my companion swooped in to say “bliss”. I wasn’t sure if this was intended for our dessert or for the girl who served it to us, who seemed satisfied with the answer in whichever way.

I hardly remember the bill, or even going out the door. Eating there had sunk me deep into an epistemological crisis.

Spiced Apple Pie with Dulce de Leche

What is Esquire? For reasons still unknown to me at the time of writing this, someone left an issue on my bed open to a recipe for “Spiced Apple Pie with Dulce de Leche”. Not bad. A little boring, but not a terrible idea to add spice and caramel sauce to apple pie. I wasn’t sure why the minimal conceit demanded a full-fludged recipe complete with retro-styled full-page photos, but whatever. Actually, who am I kidding. It’s one of the most pointlessly over-blinged desserts I’ve ever heard of.

I flipped around, and discovered other mediocre recipes coupled with raunchy food photography. Hold on--I see what’s going on here. These aren’t recipes. They’re ads. The spiced apple pie is an ad for Eagle Brand condensed milk. I have to admit, this may not have been money poorly spent on Eagle’s part, whoever they are. Apparently this is all a part of “The Esquire Pantry Hall of Fame”--a series of recipes complete with specification readouts--“CHEF:”, “MAKES:”, “PRODUCT:”--as if stenciled on a piece of military equipment. The reason for both pieces of painfully articulated information is the same: to destroy any possibility of ambiguity for readers who can’t be trusted unfold a napkin. You don’t want troops firing bazookas into their faces, or bachelors not knowing how much pie they’re making, or what brand of condensed milk to use.

I was confused. Some dimly-remembered rumor led me to believe that Esquire had content, somewhere. I searched. All I found was something about Willem Defoe, his grim face in black and white filling the entire opposite page (this magazine certainly makes use of its glossy paper). It wasn’t an article, it was a hagiography of quotations, the first of which I wish he had taken to heart more rigorously: “There’s a real wisdom to not saying anything.”

Scouring the pages for anything but ads, all I could find were nearly-nude photos of Kate Upton staring lasciviously at the camera, presenting her breasts as if they were prize pumpkins. In the first photo they’re being barely contained by a loose bra, to which she is taking scissors. Do they have a panel of 13-year-old boys, or do they come up with this stuff all on their own?

Eventually I stopped straining, and realized the nicest--admittedly the only--thing about the magazine is its fashion ads. Once I thought of it as a catalogue of mens clothing, it provided entertainment. (This whole rant is essentially an admission of how bored I am.) Of a sort. If I see one more suede desert boot, one more casual suit, one more appeal to the reader’s alleged uniqueness...

Wait, I finally get it: My dad wants me to make apple pie.