Having been brought up with the kind of company that would have papaya salad and filled tapioca balls as hors d'oeuvres and pinatas as entertainment, I never really had the chance to try caviar. I also must admit that the viscous salinity of ikura and the pop rocks glow of tobiko never really appealed to me in sushi. So, I always thought, caviar, eh, that's other half's food.
But recently, I met up with some people at a friend's house. While they were downloading Mahavishnu orchestra songs with impossibly long song titles and extolling the virtues of Kool Keith's flow, Sean asked me, "Do you like caviar? Because we have, like, five pounds of caviar and I don't know what we're going to do with it."
I said, "No, I'm not a caviar person...well, actually, I can't say that because I've never had caviar. I've had ikura and tobiko, but not any caviar caviar." So I thought about it a bit more, and I said, "I'd love to try the caviar."
Sean and Lizzy disappeared into the kitchen for a while. When Sean reappeared, he had four tiny, thin toasts on a plate, surrounding a huge tin of black pearly beluga caviar. He also brought a little container of creme fraiche and halved lemons, while Lizzy provided some chopped red onion.
So I took a fragrant little toast (which Sean explained he had pan toasted with a little butter), spooned on a frugal forkful of glistening caviar and topped the pile with a dollop of creme fraiche. That first toast bite was like nothing else I'd had before. First was the crisp-tender tear of buttery sweet toast, followed by the silky milk of the creme fraiche, and finally, the rich, soft, pop-and-ooze mouthfeel of the beluga caviar. It wasn't as salty or bizarrely yolk-like as ikura. Instead, there was just a hint of the ocean and a smooth slick of delicious oil.
Yuka, Lizzy and Sean began to debate over which was the proper method of eating caviar -- creme first or caviar first? Yuka suggested that the creme should be a base for the other flavors, and also sang its praises as a paste on which the caviar can stick. So I tried it another way -- thin buttery toast spread with a touch of creme fraiche, followed by a generous scoop of caviar, finished with a squeeze of lemon and a scattering of chopped onion. Delicious! The tart cleanliness of the lemon and cool bite of the onion made the caviar burst forth with even more oceanic boldness, then recede into the palate like a black wave.
Lizzy and I finished off those toasts, I with contemplative digestion, she with the soft declaration, "I love caviar..." in her luxurious English accent. I'll probably never eat caviar as decadently as I did that night, and perhaps I'll never get to eat beluga again. I'm glad to be experiencing these things for the first time at an age in which I can fully appreciate them; things like caviar, bitter puntarelle, anchovy, foie gras...So if this was my only experience with caviar, I will always remember it as a sumptuous, rare, perfect dining experience.
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