Salt and pepper on the table
"It's just everywhere. Everyone loves it and if it's on a menu, everyone orders it." Dan Hong
The 'it' in question is salt and pepper calamari, for which SBS says there is some claim that it is Australia's national dish. For the reasons quoted above. And it is certainly ubiquitous and tasty too - and I'm not a fan of calamari - squid to those who don't understand what calamari is. And because I had mostly seen it in cafés and Italian places I always thought of it as Italian. But apparently not. It's actually Chinese, specifically Cantonese, though nobody seems to know anything about the history of the dish. Perhaps if I frequented Chinese restaurants more often than I do I would have realised it was Chinese. I can attest to the 'everyone orders it' statement though. I know at least one person who always orders it if it's on the menu.
Felicity Cloake does her usual analysis of making the perfect salt and pepper squid as shown below. A version that does include, what I believe is, the traditional batter.
Spice is the thing though and she gives us quite a few lines to the subject:
"Batter's only a convenient vehicle for spice, however – and, for a dish with such a self-explanatory name, there's a remarkable diversity of opinion here. Huang and Granger are the only ones who really adhere to the description, although she uses white pepper and he goes for black. Stein and Tonks are faithful in a slightly fancier way, using a mixture of black and tingly, numbing Sichuan peppercorns, dry roasted until fragrant, which I love – the combination gives the batter a more assertive, complex peppery flavour. Tonks also chucks in some dried Sichuan chillies, but I decide to reserve this heat for the topping. I like his idea of reserving some of the seasoning mixture to sprinkle over the cooked squid just before serving, however, so the dish packs a little extra punch. Tam, meanwhile, goes completely off piste with a homemade "five-spice mix" of ground ginger, celery powder, salt, five-spice and chicken stock powder, which, according to my culinarily sophisticated boyfriend "makes it taste like Pot Noodle". Whether or not that's true (of course, I wouldn't know), it certainly overwhelms the flavour of the poor squid." Felicity Cloake
Kylie Kwong on the other hand just fries, without batter. She is Chinese, so perhaps we should listen.
And just to prove how international this dish has become even Jamie Oliver throws his hat into the ring. A typically 'messy' but attractive looking mix it seems to me.
It seems that just about everyone has a version and I have to say that almost without exception they look delicious. They almost look healthy even though most of them involve deep frying of some kind or another.
But moving on - when I was doing my recent articles on salt and on pepper I thought of this dish and assumed that there would be lots of other dishes which made salt and pepper a feature of the dish. So a follow-up topic for a post. And there are, but they all seem to stem from the same idea. And I'm also not sure whether the original Chinese dish is for calamari or for chicken wings, because most of the recipes I found when I goggled salt and pepper dishes, were for chicken wings.
There are literally hundreds of recipes for the wings out there but I give you two. The first is from Donna Hay and is incredibly simple. Basically just cover your wings with salt and pepper and fry - no other ingredients involved and no batter. The other is from a blog called The Kitchen Magpie. This is slightly more complicated, is partially baked in the oven and also doesn't involve batter. But the author raved about it in a rather winning way, so I thought I would put it in.
Encouraged by the chicken I searched for more and although what I found was not necessarily traditional it was certainly varied. In no particular order here are a few of the more unusual ones that I found. There are heaps for prawns of course and other shellfish too.
Let's begin with good old Nigel Slater who has a quick and easy dish of salt and pepper pork. It's appetising and easy and moreover he gives you a few ideas at the end for how to tart it up.
Then there's pork chops from a blog called The Woks of Life.
In fact it seems you can give almost anything the salt and pepper treatment. The ultimate awful one though was a Liverpool speciality - salt and pepper chips.
"The dish is made using traditional "chippy chips", mixed with onions, peppers and chillis and tossed up with lots of Asian spices."
This picture makes them look quite tempting, but the first one I saw looked pretty awful and included rather greasy looking onions too. My first reaction to this was 'ugh' but then when I thought about it I decided it was a really interesting demonstration of the merging of cultures. Doubtless there are heaps of Chinese in Liverpool as there are nowadays in most major cities around the world, but in England the Chinese have either taken a liking to chips and given them their own little twist or else they have exploited the English love of chips. I gather a lot of the chip shops are run by the Chinese these days. They probably are here too - though I remember that when we first came here they were all run by Greeks. Either way I gather they are a big thing in Liverpool. Probably best to buy from the chip shop - I've talked about cooking chips at home or getting them elsewhere before.
And all of the dishes are perfect for 'finishing' with one of your fancy salts and some fancy pepper too.
And here's a final thought or two on the ubiquitous salt and pepper condiments that we find on our tables. As somebody pointed out we assume that everyone in the world does too whether it's fancy or plain - but of course, in other countries there are other condiments. Those dipping sauces that you find in Asian restaurants, the chutneys and pickles of India, the spicy pastes you find in Latin America. Salt and pepper is just European. And even that only dates from the seventeenth century.
"In Europe during the Late Middle Ages, "Pepper was never on the table, nor was any other spice, for that matter. Usually spices would be added in the kitchen with a very heavy hand until the 17th century." Ken Albala
And the same article goes on to describe a very intricate way of serving salt with meat at the table - only for the rich of course.
"Salt was on the table, but not in a shaker. Instead, salt was often presented in saltcellars, or in Italian courtly settings, at the end of a knife offered by a trinciante, or meat carver. According to Albala, the trinciante would carve the meat in the air, allowing each slice to fall delicately to the person being served. The trinciante would then dip the end of the knife in salt and scrape it onto the diner's plate. (If this sounds complicated, it was; there were entire books dedicated to the art of carving, and noblemen were often the carvers.)" Natalie Jacewicz
So there you have salt and pepper together. Another day I'll do food featuring them but separately.
