WASHINGTON Last month I ate with the pros. The InternationalAssociation of Cooking Professionals, a group of about 400 cookingteachers, restaurateurs and writers, came into the nation's capitalto meet and eat.
The meeting parts I avoided. The eating parts I attended.
I ate traditional French food that embraces sugar and butter asfriends. And I ate naturelle French food, whose proponents feelabout sugar and butter the way most of us feel about second cousins:See them once in a great while and then in small doses.
I remain a traditional eater, but I can now see myselfoccasionally going au naturelle.
I ate pout, which is sometimes called ling. It's abottom-dwelling fish that's trying to be upwardly mobile. Even if itchanges its name, it has long way to travel to reach the top.
And I ate a white chocolate mousse with a surprise inside,pralines. I like surprises so much that I had three helpings.
The traditional French food, an apple galette - apples wedded toa pastry dough under a sheet of apricot preserves - was the work ofJacques Pepin. I regard Pepin as the Mickey Mantle of Frenchcooking. He's got the classic moves. Nobody hits home runs likeMantle, and nobody makes pastry like Pepin.
As part of the cooking association meetings, Pepin came toBaltimore's Culinary Institute to conduct a class. Even a balky oven- one minute it was hot, one minute it was not - couldn't stop Pepinfrom delivering a crust so flaky that you could wrap anything in it,even okra, and I would eat it.
The au naturelle eats came from Anton Mosimann. Mosimann is thechef of the Dorchester Hotel in London. He was in Washington for themeeting, and with John Hornsby, chef of Washington's Four WaysRestaurant, served some of his appetizers and desserts at a receptionat the restaurant.
While I have trouble cozying up to Mosimann's cooking philosophy- take the food and do very little to it - I had no trouble becomingfriendly with the food. The steamed salmon stuffed and wrapped infillo dough is something I could cozy up to often.
Pepin also was at this reception, so I asked both French chefshow they would cook a soft-shell crab. Mosimann said he would poachit and serve it without butter "so you would taste the crab."
Pepin said he would saute it. "Oh yes, with butter." LaterHornsby came down on the butter side of the issue.
It occurred to me later that the only way to resolve thisculinary question would be to have a crab cookoff. With me as thejudge.
Pout is a fish I hadn't heard much about until I ate with thesepros. They had it for lunch, the keynote lunch of their meeting.
Pout is ugly, but it eats well. Its diet is fresh mussels.According to the folks from the New England Fisheries DevelopmentFoundation, who provided the fish and facts for the lunch, many NewEngland fishermen throw the pout overboard.
The New England Fisheries folk think we should eat pout. Theysaid pout is cheap and that if you pound the fillets it tastes "justlike veal."
The cheap part I'll believe. The veal part I don't. At lunchit was covered with a sea of pepper, and tasted more peppery thanvealy. Another time it was in a fish soup. The soup was good -because it tasted fishy, not vealy.
My over-all impression of pout is that if it does make it offthe bottom of the fish rankings, it will be because of its low price,not its highfalutin aspirations to tasting like something it isn't.
To give its members the big-shot Capitol Hill treatment, thecooking association had a reception in the Cannon Office Building ofthe House of Representatives. There I finished off my eating withwhite chocolate mousse.
Ordinarily I don't bother with white chocolate. But dutyrequired that I sample it. Then I sampled it again. And again.
Some folks might call wolfing down three helpings of dessert aform of gluttony. But I call it professional behavior.
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