Mon Chéri

I have to honor the food I have with love. They're beautiful. And I can’t get any luckier. The play, Ah Wilderness!, by Eugene O'Neill, (I just finished reading it), surely had inspired me to feel this way - "Yet Ah, that Spring should vanish with the Rose!/That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close!" Lounging all day with the book, a storm was suddenly approaching the island with forceful wind gust smashing the curtains, so I got up and shut the windows in several rooms at risk of rain spray. And returning to reading, I got hungry. Inspecting the fridge was cooked rainbow linguine begging for a good sauce. I have salted butter, I have fresh sage. And how about the surinam cherries for contrast tart? The shrub grows in the side yard of my place and they’re edible delicious ripe when deep red. And ’tis the season! Alas, that was quick and satisfactory dinner— twirling and mopping the plate of beurre blanc in the pasta, and literally the fruits just picked, from branch to my mouth, explode c'est bon. (Simply put: melt a decent chunk of butter in a pan with the chopped herb and lightly fry the sage, and then coat the pasta liberally with the sauce, adding crushed black pepper and chili flakes, mixing them all in with a tong and letting all the aromatic emulsions absorb every strand. Transfer to a square bistro plate. Arrange the cherries on top and around as pretty as pretty can be. Eat; marry into eating.)  

"They do not know the secret in the poet's heart. Food! I love the sand, and the trees, and the grass and the water and the sky, and the moon... it's all in me and I'm in it... God, it's so beautiful! We'll go to some far-off wonderful place ... somewhere out on the long trail - the trail that is always new ... [and] we'll watch the dawn come up like thunder..." 

The porch screen door rattles and detritus leaves and bougainvillea flowers blow in the hallway; victuals of the biosphere make their entrance into the kitchen narrative of my home. Poetry feeds too. And I did my part before the break of day at the refuge, the morning after the rain, rebuilding the collapse wall of stones protecting the forest pool. Like in the play, hard work replaces prayers, that all is forgiven, because the mountain hears. The downstream current was strong and I slipped dropping my heavy load, there was a breach, but I didn't wash away. I was saved. It was like... I was in the belly of the poem. And I was food. 

 

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GATHERING

 A small group of friends came and filled the table with cheer. And the colors and music, everything, kept up with Christmas. There was talk of pomegranates and figs unavailable at the store. All of us wore red. Pistachio and green onions paella was served traditional. Petite fudge cakes in the tin box. Flute glasses of ginger soda. Pine cone centerpiece (a gift from upcountry) glittered with stars. Priceless reaction. Silver and blue lights wrapped around the rocks, in place of tree. Toasting and picture-taking - To good times...

Medjool dates, sugared cranberries, and candied cashews. The vibrance of salad. A circle of hands in prayer around the table. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote in a poem that the best anniversaries in life were what's celebrated and remembered in the silence of the heart. Decaf coffee is brewing in anticipation of the pineapple-queso fresco-crumble-pudding especial. If you love, love by quality, the aspect of your gathering...

Take this home. Reading the cards, opening the presents with tears. Unexpected fireworks outside the window, like popping a champagne. Singing along the Sound of Music album on the record player, songs of old lines you know. Washing and wiping dishes together. Saying goodbye with a deep hug. And waiting and waving as the cars drive out. Last night I wrote in my diary that the future has come early for this child...       

 

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ODE TO LEMON

ODE TO LEMON

Poetry is a Language that can’t be drawn from either. Think of a sugared citron. Or a Mario Batali lemon mousse. Yes, the magic in creation is evident in the created — beauty, taste achievement, sparkles in your eyes — but the feeling is elusive, love is offered up. What is writing without a lemon? What is cooking without a friend? Pick up a dead critter in the kitchen. Marvel at Dave Chappelle. It is impossible to never mind the pain. The lemon is still in the fridge, topside off, squeezed to lift the flavor of the crushed tomato gazpacho yesterday. Semantically the leftover fruit is the poet’s connection to the source of a poem. If only she’ll be there.

🍋

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NAPA CABBAGE IN DASHI AND MUSTARD

   Inspired by avid love for Japanese cuisine and binge-watching of Tokyoite food shows, this consommé was served for lunch today and was a hit. This traditional broth is vegan using whole petite sweet potatoes and Napa cabbage (just the lower half portion around the stem) as stock ingredients, and boiling them down together tightly, the former will render sweetness, the latter succulence. In the show, stuffed cabbage rolls were being prepared filled with shirataki (root noodles) and mushrooms and cooked holubtsi-style, the rolls dunked in clear boiling soup for fifteen minutes and once done, smothered on a plate with rich tomato sauce Ukrainian-style (Chef Saito, of the show, is a fusionist - yoshoku, melding western and eastern influences in his restaurant oeuvre. Enter dijon honey mustard to finish the soup, with sage and red chili pepper leaves. This soup is light but nourishing, and its flavor cosmopolitan. Veselka, in the E. Village of New York, was one of my favorite restaurants in the city. The name in translation means rainbow- no coincidence. 

The main dish I prepared with this soup had a condiment reminiscent of borscht ordered from Veselka (a cold beet soup with cucumbers, scallions and yogurt), yet in my small salad were the citric cukes and some segments of mandarin oranges with their zest (again, east meets west). On the plate is an ensemble of sprouted brown rice perfumed with basil stems, and broiled eggplant and zucchini frittata served with a thick dot of its own drippings, delicious with the palate cleaning dry borscht. One of the last food books Chef James Beard would write was about his "delights and prejudices" in the experience of cooking "as an analysis of good eating against fancy eating." America's culinary authority ultimately wrote about the renaissance of the all-American cuisine with the emphasis on tradition and terroir (of the land provided seasonally), reflected in a memoir based on his bon vivant lifestyle, the world's traditional food his teacher, and the musings from his childhood in Oregon, a frontier landscape bountiful of local fisheries and wild forages, ever to shape his poetry of good food and good eating, from his weathered hands and heart. This food blog has been, in an inspired way, a diary of that sort, travel writing from here to my fond past memories of the world - and above all this love and appetite is, as well, my food for poetry, and for poetry to my food.              

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