Sexeteria

Preface: I've spent way too much money buying and fully enjoying a particular seasonal delicacy the past two weeks (see #1 in the list below) and it made me want to write this post.

I was watching a marathon showing of Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares on BBC America this weekend.* In it, chef Gordon Ramsay was trying to educate a particularly stubborn young French chef on what really wins a chef culinary accolades. The young guy was building beautifully elaborate dishes with stunning color palettes; and each blended a huge number of flavor combinations together. You could see the love and effort the guy was putting into his ideas; but in the end, Ramsey (and two surprise Michelin inspectors) gave it to him straight: strip it down and make it simple.

Sure, there are any number of avant-garde fusions you could create with ingredients, but at the end of the day it's not about how many interesting and high-end ingredients you can mix up together or how clever you are or how pretty it looks. It's about your clientele being able to put a morsel of that dish in their mouths and instantly get that rush of naked freshness from each ingredient caressing their tongues.

Over-seasoning is the culinary equivalent to making love to a person drenched in cologne. It desensitizes the experience and erases the pleasure of one's primal instinctual triggers being roused to extreme heights. The intensity of that one scent overwhelms your other senses, and all you can smell or taste is the cologne. You can't taste your lover's sweat or natural juices. You can't smell the way their body scent changes as their arousal builds. When you finish, you can't smell their scent on you for the rest of the day--all you can smell is the horrible unnatural scent of a chemical concoction. At the end, from a sensory perspective, you're not sure you've slept with a human.

It's the same with food. When I eat, I want to be sure of what I've eaten. I want every sense to be stimulated, not saturated to the point of dulling-out.

With that in mind, here is a shortlist of my favorite stripped-naked foods. These beautiful (and sometimes rare) items are those that I love to eat above all else in the world, and which I think taste far better naked than they ever do with any kind of dressing up.

1) Rainier cherries. Grown only in the American northwest, available only 2 months out of the year, most difficult of all cherry varieties to grow successfully. Incredibly delicate flesh. A short whisper of a shelf-life once picked. Worth a king's ransom at American supermarkets--and even more in other countries like Japan, where one source I read said people can pay up to $1 per cherry. Sound extreme? You're wrong. There's a reason people think it's worth it. The gorgeous, glowing yellow-blushed flesh, the intense burst of sweet pungence...there is NOTHING like it. Regular cherries simply don't even come close. The fruit's nectar is such that you imagine it must have been food created for the sustenance of gods and goddesses, and by some lucky accident, some of it slipped down to earth. Right now is the season for them. Go get some.

2) Oysters. Cold, briny, smooth as silk; one sip and gulp and it's the closest experience we'll ever have to understanding what it's like to live under the ocean (a childhood fantasy of mine--I've always been drawn to the sea). Besides a slight kiss of either cocktail sauce or vinegar mignonette, any kind of dressing up of these heavenly things makes them lesser. I don't care how great a po' boy tastes or how rich they are Rockefellered, or how surprisingly good they are in an omelette. If they're not naked, you've lost something.

3) Chanterelle mushrooms. Not dried, not commercially farmed. Wild, fresh, ONLY. These beautiful, delicate, creamsicle-colored trumpets from the earth are another item that's extremely seasonal, and depending how far you live from their original growing regions, the quality of them (and the price) can really vary. I often see them wet and slimy to the touch (obviously through a failed attempt to keep them hydrated), or a little too dry and leathery feeling (through not keeping them hydrated enough). The best will feel..well...mushroomy. When touched, they should have a feel of having a moisture held inside (as with a standard button mushroom) and give a bit to the touch, but should not be wet and clammy, or dry and leathery. Like other short-seasoned produce, they're gonna cost you, but they're worth it. They taste like no other mushroom on earth--delicate and nutty, with a slight hint of meaty wildness--not at all earthy or musky like other mushrooms. One site I looked at described them as "having the aroma of apricots and tasting more like a flower then a mushroom." They truly are that lovely. And the sad thing is that many chefs bury their delicate taste and aroma by combining them with other ingredients. SACRILEGE. These mushrooms should be eaten on their own. Just sauté them quickly in the a small amount of butter (and if you insist on getting fancy, you can add a touch of sherry)--and that's IT. This brings out their natural flavor and it is a feast for royalty. One bite and you'll want to eat nothing else but that for weeks on end.

4) Uni (sea urchin roe). Cold, creamy, lush and lightly sea-scented, moist and softly firm, eating this delicacy is like French kissing the ocean. You're probably not ever going to find this at a regular supermarket, and as it's eaten raw, if you're buying on your own, I'd be hesitant to purchase it from anywhere but a fish market of the absolute highest reputation. But really, unless you have serious restaurant-industry connections, it's going to be difficult to find it anywhere outside of a sushi restaurant--so that's where you should look for it. But even in restaurants, it can be really difficult to find good quality uni. When being served it, be sure it doesn't look dry and grainy or super wet and mushy and falling apart. It should look something like...well, an orange tongue, really. And like oysters, it should have a scent of fresh, clean sea water--it should NOT have a very strong, fishy smell. If it does, send it back. Good uni looks and tastes as described in the opening sentence to this paragraph. And once you've found it, you'll know. And when that happens, once you've found the right place, from thereon out, if they'll allow this, get your uni naked--deep six the sushi rice and seaweed bed--order it as sashimi. You won't be sorry.

5) Watermelon. I don't even need to go into this one at any length--I'm guessing everyone's experienced it. Remember that hot, hot day way back when, you and your family or a whole bunch of kids outdoors somewhere, and someone cracks open a watermelon and hands you a big slice. You take your first bite and suddenly the whole hot, sweaty day just disappears and you're transported to a secret cave of coolness and for just a moment, life is so, so sweet...ahhhh. Aside from slightly chilling it, there is nothing you can do to this simplest and most basic of all melons that would make it in any way more perfect than it already is.

Wow, I could go on forever, but one more...my secret shame and delight...

6) Foie gras. Yes, I stopped eating veal. I only buy free-range organic chicken. I attempt to always buy cruelty-free meats. And yet...as the quote goes, "consistency is not really a human trait." Despite its un-PC nature, I still can not keep myself from eating foie gras whenever I have the chance. Which is not often, because it's difficult to find unadulterated foie gras. Anyway, I apologize if I've disappointed anyone--go on and hate me if you must. What can I say...it's friggin' delicious. It's lush and creamy and full of delicate meatiness. Cold or hot, it's amazing. BUT--I HATE when people bastardize it with pork or chicken fillers. Straight duck! C'est fini! And don't stick a whole bunch of herbs or a massive amount of pepper in there, either. Just let me taste the duck, please. And I won't even go into the horror of putting foie gras in things like (::shudder::) hamburgers or hot dogs. I will allow a tiny touch of sweet fruit or its preserves as a side, as this only boosts the natural flavor of the foie gras. But anything else is just a defloration of one of the world's most perfect foods.

So...hungry yet? Agree with me? Disagree? Have some favorite naked-is-best foods to add to the list?

*Side note: if you've never seen this show and have any interest at all in food, the fine dining industry, or endearingly egotistical chefs (are there any other kind?), it's a must-see--new season coming on soon, so I hear.

Photo credits:

Nature's Candy by bksecretphoto
Kumamoto Oysters by Laurel Fan
fruits de la forêt by uberschnapp
Izumi's Uni sushi by hermanau
Foie Terrine by chefledarney
Weekend delight by c.zwerg.