Fries · 23 May 2002
Just shy of my 36th birthday, I have for the first time acquired a kitchen appliance above the technological sophistication of a toaster. It is an electric fryer. It plugs into the wall, has a vast reservoir and a basket that goes up and down. It has dials and a temperature gauge, and pithy little illustrations indicating the optimal time through which to sink your fish or chips or whatever into seething hot fat. When all closed up, sitting idle, it looks like the head of a Mighty Morphin’ Power Ranger.
I’m big on french fries. The kids love french fries, Herself likes them fine. Hereabouts, of course, they simply call them fries. French toast is pain perdu, ‘lost bread’, but that’s another matter.
Anyway through the years I’ve blundered about the kitchen, rendering inedible all manner of innocent ingredients, always managing somehow to use every single washable object in the process. Never had the patience for recipes. But like most everyone, over time I’ve developed the facility to bash out a couple dozen decent meals. I can truss a chicken.
But I never got the fries down. Something about finding the exact temperature for the two frying stages. I knew that it had to be less hot the first time, before the fries were allowed to cool and ‘sweat’, and that it had to be hothothot the second time, to attain the crucial crispy-fluffy Belgian ideal. But I always winged it, guessing at the temperatures, and it always went wrong. Mushy, burnt, blah, whatever.
But they’re good, now, with this new device. Third try nailed it. Sea salt and malt vinegar.
And now, as every success must of course leave room for another disaster, I’m undertaking to deep-fry every single savoury foodstuff available to humankind. At once.
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