I have tried to make croissants many times. And as anybody can expect, I don’t get the layers. At best I have got out of the oven some things that taste nice and are edible in general. At worse I have observed from a careful distance some deformed blobs of dough boiling in melted butter. But the layers... those infinitely thin and crispy leafs of golden dough...
Not yet.
Now and then I wonder what’s the big deal. I am fairly happy with my challa’s, and scones and crossed buns. I need no croissants to make my friends and family happy at any other breakfast. As a matter of fact, I am very happy about my layered cooking. Because, when I get to think about my food, that’s how I think about it, in layers.
Consider the first layer, the argentinian one. There you have what my mother called churrasquitos, more or less a T bone steak, grilled. That is what I got day in and day out for my first decade in this world, and then some. But not only, of course. Argentinians are italians, so we made pasta and order as much pizza as north americans order hamburgers or dutch order french fries. As important as the smell of grilled meat are the texture of strong flour in my hands, when sharing with my sister the honor of distribute the -just cut- tagliatelle in a bigger plate to wait for the boiling water.
Or the event stronger texture of Harina Pan, that venezuelan corn meal used to make arepas. So enters the venezuelan layer. First the coarse corn flower, then the texture of the disc taking shape between my clapping hands, and then the crunch of the thing itself, just out of the oven with hard surface and soft inside. Soft inside immediately scooped away (greedily eaten with butter by some of us at the back of my parents) and exchanged by grated cheese, a slice of avocado, black beans.
There I have jumped in time. My hands flouring tagliatelle are the hands of a 7 years old, looking for the approval of my grandmother at preventing the tagliatelle to stick to each other. The hands that hold an arepa with cheese, black beans and avocado are my hands at 20, after having run Caracas’ night with whoever was around. They are also my hands at 20few, after having discovered the most venezuelan fiesta of them all, a baseball match in a stadium a sunday, and an arepa afterwards in El Tropezón. Or are my hands now, being fifty and doing pretty much the same than thirty years ago, shaping arepas and crying inside for a country that does not exists, anymore.
But are also the hands that have learned to butterfly a lamb’s leg, and rub it with mustard and chilies and some other things, to lay it in the oven. Or the hands that, in this later layer of living in The Netherlands, have learn to wield a pestle and make a thai paste for an unexpectedly sharp and sweet and acid and salty curry, or the hands that join the borders of a circular wonton skin, and create a gyoza.
So perhaps that’s why I am upset by my total incapacity at recreate that french miracle of layers, a croissant. Because what is to cook, if not creating layers?