Cellar Door blog

levitating in china: shanghai's maglev train makes the ride to the airport a high-speed thrill

(Originally published in Everywhere Magazine, August 2008) 

 

There was a road on a large hill near my childhood home that everyone called “the Coaster.”  As kids we’d whizz down the Coaster on our Big Wheels, feet in the air, pedals spinning in a blur, wind on our faces, and no way to stop.  For years, it defined my concept of speed; I could conceive of nothing faster – until I visited Shanghai a few decades later.

Shanghai is the home to China’s Magnetic Levitation train, so named because the train levitates on a cushion created by the repelling forces of opposed magnets. (Think of how two magnets fight each other when you try to push the opposite poles together, and you get the basic idea).  It’s the only high-speed maglev in commercial service anywhere in the world.  The system cost roughly $1.2 billion to build, and it runs only 19 miles, from Pudong International Airport to downtown Shanghai.  By car, the journey takes well over an hour.  But at a speed of over 260 mph, the maglev makes the trip in just over seven minutes.

 

 
Looking out the window as you leave the station, you see the texture of Shanghai’s suburbs: people riding on bicycles, squat hutong alleyways, and the ugly, skeletal infrastructure that supports the city.  But as the train approaches top speed, the countryside flies by in a blur and the view out the window becomes like the feeling you get when you open your eyes underwater.  Other modes of fast transportation tend to accelerate quickly and then level off, but the maglev train never seems to stop accelerating.  The sensation is like a smoother, quieter jet takeoff, only instead of leaving the ground, it felt like we were stuck to the earth with the gravitational force of a speeding luge.  The sense of motion was visceral, at once steady and deliriously out of control.  Though the ride is smooth, winds constantly buffet the carriage from side to side.

I arrived feeling like I hadn’t even left yet.  We exited giddily and dashed to the other side of the platform for the return trip like kids getting off a carnival ride just to rejoin the line for another go.  Shanghai’s maglev experience resurrected a sensation of speed I had only previously known in childhood.  Except now I’d finally found something faster.

defeated by patisserie: a failed attempt to make homemade canelés

I thought I knew a lot about patisserie until I stumbled upon canelés de bordeaux for the first time and realized I really must know nothing if I could have possibly missed something so wonderful.  Then I realized that canelés aren’t really as common as so many other more familiar patisserie items particularly because they are challenging to bake successfully.  But the optimist in me, blinded by my immediate addiction to the marvelous little cakes, thought that if I couldn’t find canelés at the local bakery I’d make them myself.

Heaps of cookbooks are published every year.  And people must be buying them or they wouldn’t go to the trouble to print them.  But it is not so clear that they’re using them to cook, as opposed to merely engaging in food spectating.  If a cookbook is essentially a set of instructions, its appeal is predicated on a person’s assumption that they’re capable of actually making the recipes it includes.  It is all very much in keeping with the entrepreneurial American “do it yourself” spirit.  Sometimes though you have to be man enough to admit when something is beyond your ability.  This is one of those instances.

My first encounter with canelés was a revelation: tiny fluted cakes that fit in the palm of your hand... their shiny golden crust the perfect combination of a crispy/chewy wall that you bite through before you get to the eggy, custardy center infused with vanilla and rum.  I knew I was blessed to discover them but then immediately realized I was cursed because I hooked and wanted more.  It was fortunate that one of the best bakeries in all of Seattle was located only a few blocks from my house.  But despite their product line that includes upwards of 150 items, they did not make canelés.  In fact, few bakeries did.  An intelligent person would have taken that as a sign.  I did not.

Days later I was already online doing research on these perfect little cakes. Their legend apparently stretched back for centuries.  I found an apocryphal story about how they originated near docks where they were made them with the flour spilled from cargo ships.  Others had them originating in monasteries.  In early iterations they had been more bread-like and were probably fried.  As only the French could, rules were applied to define the proper cooking methods and correct appellation of the little cakes.  Less evidence is available as to how they migrated to their current cooking methods.  And that was most interesting.

In order to achieve that wonderful combination of golden exterior and custardy interior, the canelés are cooked in special tin-lined, copper molds.  As if that wasn’t enough, a special mixture of butter and edible beeswax is used to line the interior of the molds, acting as a releasing agent.  I was intrigued by the challenge of the obscure equipment and the many mentions I discovered of the tricky process.  But making my own continued to seem like the best way I was going to get a steady supply.  So I began to look around for what I would need to make it happen.

There were silicone molds available.  And their price was inflated owing to the relative expense of the copper which was the only other viable option.  As the silicone did not require the beeswax/butter formula I judged it to be less authentic and focused only on procuring the copper molds.  There didn’t seem to be any used molds being offered anywhere.  So I bought (for around $120) six brand-new copper molds from Mauviel, a company that had been making copper cookware in France since the 1830’s.  Once they arrived I had to season them by brushing oil on their tin interiors and placing them on a baking sheet which went into a 350 degree oven for an hour. 

Then I set about finding a suitable recipe.  There were dozens online.  It seemed like basically a crepe batter of milk, eggs, vanilla, sugar, butter, flour and a little bit of rum.  Most of the recipes recommended making the batter and allowing it to chill and rest over night in the fridge.

The food-quality beeswax and clarified butter was mixed in equal proportion in a sauce pan with much care (considering that it was essentially fuel that seems to burn very well in candles).  The result resembled a less viscous, milky beeswax.  And it was from here that I began to go wrong.  I had seasoned the molds a few days prior and hadn’t thought about pre-heating them before the actual baking.  As I brushed the beeswax/butter emulsion into the molds it cooled much too rapidly and was ultimately a much thicker layer than I needed.  I wouldn’t figure this out until it was too late.

With my molds lined with the beeswax, the batter was poured in until each mold was about 3/4 full.  The canelés were put into a hot oven (over 400 degrees) and cooked for more than an hour, which is needed to give the cakes their dark, golden brown “shell” which would encase the delicate custard.  I had read somewhere that the tops of the cakes might rise above the rim and then sink down again, which they did.  But the cooking time was variable.  It was different for every recipe I found.  And warnings about not rushing the process were widespread too.  So there was a bit of hand-wringing and equivocation about the timing.  The most troublesome development was that it seemed the wax mixture had melted and bubbled to the top of the molds during baking.

I finally decided the very dark cakes should come out. They needed to cool but I was anxious to know if I was successful.  So I took one of the molds off the rack after only a short time, inverted it, and was disappointed when it did not slip out of the mold cleanly.  In fact, it didn’t slip out at all.  I used wooden skewers to poke and prod at the insides of the mold until the canelé came out... in pieces.

My experiment was unsuccessful.  The center was slightly moist and custardy, but was mostly a sad, deflated blob.  The outside was too dark.  Not quite burned but well-beyond the delicious golden stage.  What’s worse is that there was a thick, unappetizing wax layer on the outside that coated your mouth in an extremely unpleasant way.  I knew that even if I had allowed the other cakes to cool the results would probably be the same.

I’ve talked with a few people after this experience and what I’ve discovered is that few succeed at their first attempt to bake this temperamental little cake.  And I guess that I may have succeeded if I kept at it.  But I decided it wasn’t worth it for me, just from that fact that it took me forever to clean all of the wax out of the molds to reset them.  It was just too much trouble for too low a percentage of success.  The best news was that I listed my expensive seasoned canelés molds on eBay and was delighted when they sold at a tidy profit.  I’ll be using the proceeds to buy some canelés at Honoré Artisan Bakery in Ballard.

chasing frank sinatra

 

(Dorset/Axley image archives for Columbia Records, used with permisson)
 

It was a crisp, sunny evening in September of 1982 and Frank Sinatra was coming to inaugurate my hometown’s new stadium, “the Centrum.”  The building was a brightly-painted orange, monstrosity of early 80's architecture; a civic center that was the latest in a long series of schemes to “revitalize” the depressed downtown area of Worcester, Massachusetts, New England’s second largest rustbelt city. The large Italian-American population was a built-in Sinatra fan-base.  But beyond the paisans, it seemed that everyone of the World War II generation, who was lucky enough to get a ticket, was getting dressed to the nines to attend the show.  Every tuxedo shop in town was rented out to the last polyester stitch.

I had only a vague sense of who Sinatra was at that age. But I was always game to hop in the car with my dad and depart our boring suburban street to cruise downtown for what little excitement our dead city had to offer. There were ten times the normal amount of people out on the street that night. The energy was palpable.  All of the Boston television stations had their satellite trucks idling outside the venue. We circled the Centrum a few times to take it all in.  Our car was stopped at a traffic light when we saw a long, black limousine pull out of one of the back loading bays. My dad said, “I’ll bet that’s his car. You wanna follow it and see?” Of course I said yes. An hour before I had been sitting at home watching TV. Now I was on some kind of a chase. 

We followed the car over to the west side of town and up the hills that led to the Worcester Airport.  Our regional airport was a small whistle stop in those days.  It had a tiny terminal bordered with low wooden fences.  On balmy summer evenings in the summer it wasn’t unusual for people to pile in the car and drive up to the airport to watch the planes take off and land.  With its hilltop views of the city and the excitement of the limitless possibilities of transportation (especially to the blue collar families whose lives were often like the machine cogs they worked amongst in local factories) it made the airport a favorite destination of many. 

The limousine pulled in through one of the gates that led to the tarmac. I could see that there were a handful of middle aged women who had gathered just outside the gate. There seemed to be a few children among them, no doubt as in the dark as I was about the afternoon’s attraction but equally as welcoming of the diversion. Some of the kids and I exchanged knowing glances.

We got out of the car and waited.  When a small, cream-colored jet flared out, landed and taxied in by the hangar the suspense built. I was relieved. I was already beginning to to get bored and was progressing to thoughts of how I would convince my father to stop for ice cream on the way home.  The older women women in the crowd began to scream as the door to the jet opened.  I curled my fingers through the metal cyclone fence and could feel the movement as others along the fence pushed and pulled at it in excitement.  The jet’s door flipped down, extending stairs to the tarmac and a man in a gray suit, carrying a battered brown attache, stepped unceremoniously to the ground.  I was immediately disappointed that he looked so small and did not have some kind of movie star glow about him.  But it was then that I could feel the energy dissipate and overheard someone say, “It’s not him.” 

So we continued to wait.  At length another jet landed. And this one taxied past us and into a private hangar into which the limousine had disappeared. After a few minutes the car came creeping out of the hangar toward the gate. The diehard fans quickly realized all of their waiting might be for naught as the car was about to slip out the gate and pull away. In seconds the same obsessed middle-aged women channeled their inner delirious teen in the presence of a matinee idol crooner. I saw one push hard on a section of gate which gave way and opened enough so that the crowd could squeeze through. The crowd advanced forward and swept me along with them towards the car. 

A motor began to hum as the electric window slide open.  And I could see a few men seated in the back of the car.  People reached in over my head and shook the hand of the man I understood to be Sinatra.  I stuck my hand in and did the same.  He grabbed my small hand, gave it a quick shake and moved to the next.

Though I wish I had a better story, about running into Sinatra in a smoky mob-owned bar, that was the extent of my brush with greatness that evening.  But I judged the greater and sweeter success of our mission that I got my ice cream on the way home: Friendly’s maple walnut with chocolate jimmies.