I’ve never quite understood the concept of an aphrodisiac. Food and sex don’t really belong together; eating is such a self-contained sensual pleasure that bringing sex into it strikes me as overkill. Aphrodisiacs, like all attempts to bring together the culinary and the amatory (books on cooking in the nude, erotic bakeries, food porn, Gael Greene’s writing) make me think of that ludicrous scene in that yellow peril movie “Rising Sun,” in which the villain shows his depravity by eating sushi off the bodies of naked women.
Having said this (and I should point out that this is a minority view among chefs), it’s always great fun coming up with all-aphrodisiac menus, as we do every year at Duo for Valentine’s Day. We incorporate foods that have been considered since antiquity to have libido-enhancing properties, like for example, pine nuts. We also use foods that have a strong sensory component — aromatic rosemary, oozy, funky Taleggio, or rich, melted chocolate. And we use a lot of raw foods — ceviches, tartares of steak and tuna, and my favorite, oysters on the half shell.
I can see how raw meat and raw seafood are considered aphrodisiacs — they remind us of our own flesh, and eating them carries a certain exciting risk, perhaps similar to the illicit thrill of dangerous intimacy.
Oysters are my favorite raw seafood. I like to eat them with buttered black bread and drizzle them with this cucumber mignonette — a lively sauce made with champagne, champagne vinegar, shallot, cracked black pepper and a handful of diced cucumber.
John Broening cooks at Duo and Olivea restaurants in Denver.
