【The New Yorker】How to Season Your Food Like the French

oft-

意味　(詩· 文)[通例複合語として]＝often

My education, as such, began fifteen years ago, when I was living in Lyon with my family and training to cook French food at l’Institut Paul Bocuse. There I heard an early and oft-repeated lesson: that the two most important ingredients in the French kitchen are salt and pepper. Frankly, this was an almost comically reductive take on one of the world’s most complicated cuisines, but implicit in it was an attitude: that even the most obvious, most taken-for-granted ingredients in your kitchen need attention.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/secret-ingredients/how-to-season-your-food-like-the-french

これは使ってみたい表現！

elapse

意味　(かたく)〈時が〉経過する, 経つ, 過ぎ去る （進行形にしない） .

I tested my theory on Lior Lev Sercarz, a French-trained cook (and former restaurant Daniel sous-chef) turned spice merchant. “The pepper American shoppers get is old,” he confirmed. “By the time you bring it home, two years could have elapsed since it was harvested. And then it gets worse, because people have learned from somewhere that pepper never goes bad.” Pepper, he stressed, does go bad. It’s dry so it doesn’t get moldy. “Instead, it turns into dust. Actually, dust has more flavor.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/secret-ingredients/how-to-season-your-food-like-the-french

コショウは腐らないと思ってた…賞味期限切れても平気で使ってるw

bricks-and-mortar

意味　（投資の対象としての） 家屋, 建物.

Sercarz runs La Boîte, a company with a brick-and-mortar outpost in Hell’s Kitchen, selling his exotic wares to restaurant chefs and food-obsessed civilians. He is fifty-two years old, with an easy smile and a professionally apposite “salt-and-pepper” beard, and, though Israeli by birth, has a Frenchman’s righteous indignation at witnessing food being mishandled. The big spice importers are cynics, he says, and sell a mediocre product. But why shouldn’t they? “Consumers have no idea what’s good, because they can’t be bothered to smell or taste what they are seasoning their food with.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/secret-ingredients/how-to-season-your-food-like-the-french

peppercorn

意味　[C]乾燥させたコショウの実.

But what can you do if you don’t have a Mr. Pepper looking after your interests? For a start, go to your kitchen cupboard and throw away all your pepper. Then look for small importers, in your community or online. Buy two or three varieties. Remove a peppercorn from each package and crush it between your teeth. Pungent? Lively? Discover what appeals to you, just as you might taste different bottles of wine. Don’t buy in big quantities. (“Pepper is not a pantry item,” Sercarz stresses, “even though you will read that it is.”) Treat it, therefore, like a perishable. Use what you have and replace it only when you run out.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/secret-ingredients/how-to-season-your-food-like-the-french

あのガリガリすると粗挽き胡椒になるやつ、料理好き家庭かお店にしかないよな。いわゆるテーブル塩コショウが一番美味しく感じる私にはとてもとても。

rebuke

意味　[C][U]𠮟責, 非難.

This was obviously basic knowledge. Was I being tested? “I’m one of those people,” I admitted. “I don’t know the difference.” I braced for some polite rebuke. Instead, Sercarz was like a reassuring schoolteacher. “Green is made from an unripe berry,” he said. “Black is fully mature. White is black with its casing rubbed off. And red is deliberately overripe, like a late-harvest grape.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/secret-ingredients/how-to-season-your-food-like-the-french