"THE STUFF OF LITERATURE"

                                                                                          AN ODE

Squash-bell-flower is the inside picture of this "food art," butter and oil. And charred around the edges like pansies. It is fork edible. Toast a roll. Savor the bloom. Perfume to the nose akin to a sliced whole pomelo, but citrus ratatouilles. For the composition of a bruschetta. The theme is spring-awakening ... for primroses to turn from olive hue. Monet Water Lilies: from table to landscape. Remembering the sublime lotus pond-living mirror at the ruins of Angkor Wat ... "They were both saints, so they could endure these austerities as easily as water pours on fire. But he was a common mortal, so he was at the mercy of his sufferings, like paper placed in fire" (The Buddha). Turpentine on canvas, color black-green of the Mona Lisa. Timeless, Magnificent passing.          

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PEARL PEPPERS AND CHICKPEA SHELLS

Red Peruvian Pearl Peppers. The name was inviting. And this could be-ingredient clicked on the spot (I was in line at Whole Foods yesterday and saw the chickpea shells box on the front cap of the aisle, I had already grabbed the pearl peppers and cornichons on the salad bar and was still thinking what to cook with them, and yes! for a moment's revelation, that's a match). The pearls were pickled and sweet and plump in juice like those big capers in jars, and the color vitality was on top of my imagination in anticipation of the look of the dish. I knew that organically they would come together good with the kale liquid to cook in the shells, with addition of their leaves, plus the brine from the crumbled peppered feta I got to cream them all. I called my neighbor and she's stopping by later for a taste.

How easy to do this dish: (1) vigorously boil the kales leaves-lightly salted water together in a tall pot, running it down to maximum maceration until greening the liquid (fifteen minutes), and then drop the pasta shells - cook for an additional 6 minutes then shut off heat, keeping lid on for three more minutes for residual al dente-ing; afterwards, drain all in colander; (2) using the same pot, melt a quarter of a stick of butter in medium low and add the pearl peppers with some of its juice, stir in, when bubbling, turn off; (3) quickly fold in the cooked chickpea shells and kale leaves in the pot and incorporate the butter-pepper sauce deeply, and while everything's still hot, add the crumbled feta through the pasta to cream itself and flavor it ad hoc of salt and pepper; (4) that's it; spoon out and serve on a pretty floral plate.

Every Saturday my ohana-landlord leaves outside my door a cooler filled with home-farm vegetables and fruits in excess of what her clan gives her weekly. And of course I make the most of them (the kale from this dish was from her), and that's why she's always happy to share. She loves pastries and inventive drinks and hand-written notecards, and when it's my turn to share, a cute box will be waiting to surprise her at her door; always we exchange gifts. I got some raspberries from Whole and alternative milks, my usual, and I think that's what I'll do for her this afternoon: a cold "bubble (boba) tea" made of vanilla oat and cashew milks immersing the berries in and steeping peach-honey tea to sweeten it up, and the berries in substitute for tapiocas, will add some ice. I will put a plumeria flower on tea jar for her with a thank you card drawing in a red heart. And kiss the note.    

 

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VINTAGE TRAVEL

Berlin, circa Nov. 2016

The passage here was long planned— like a pact from two star-crossed lovers.  A week before in Hydra, Greece, writing/burning like a comet assuring-confident-with great expectations of their meeting. The avatar, "riding" it and bringing them together, was their favorite book: "The Universe is a Green Dragon." From Hamburg, finishing a PhD in Forestry, a train would taken to the meeting place at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof on the appointed date and hour. Flying from Athens to Berlin wasn't that arduous for the poet. They can't wait... 

Three years before, they were together in New York for the first time. A rendezvous on board the Staten Island Ferry was cinematic, wind-swept hairs on the side deck, against all obstacles, they made it. Sitting side-by-side on the ornate balustrade around the Jackie Onassis Reservoir in Central Park, gazing at the lone fountain, was eternal for them. Lunch of mustard apple salad and crisp wine at Café Sabarsky inside Neue Galerie (Gallery) was superfluous to the heart, their lives lit up. The impromptu, with dreadlocks, D.J. on the subway played what would be their "love song" in rap. They looked at each other shy, but happy, for the randomness of what was an unspoken truth promising the future it would bring. Poetry meant the world to them. In the shoebox studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn, the writer slept on the floor, and the forester was given the bed. At the departure's gate, inside a small gift was a novel by Brian Swimme. It was opened. And then tears...

Setting up nets and trap cages around the bog at dusk, they were research partners for an environmental impact assessment class (this was twelve years ago in the Laguna, Philippines), and according to the instructor what creatures would be caught that night determined the health or degradation of that ecosystem. The passion for biological nature had been planted as early as it could be remembered for the intrepid graduate student: The forest can communicate through its enduring presence.  And this was how it all started. A meeting of two minds, and of many great minds and faces along the way, and taking it as far as they could reach; to Berlin, to the universe. "She thinks with me, or rather, she thinks a whole world of which my thought is a mirror. And my feelings, too, my whole experience - consecrated in poetry..." (George Eliot, Middlemarch). 

     

 

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RICE AGAIN

I toggle between Francis Lam and Sam Sifton for cooking inspiration, and this week’s cultural attributions to their story-recipes where particularly lovely: it’s about Tet. Tet is the Lunar New Year celebrated in Vietnam, and it’s fast approaching (Feb. 12), and this means food preparation— and prolific and abundant and colorful and shiny they should be, custom dictates. I was impressed on the pickling emphasis using allium vegetables like pearl shallots and the rhizomes of green onions (very decorative condiments); and wow to their braised-once-grilled dishes achieving a “caramel coconut sauce” (the technique is beautiful). I imagine the family kitchen in anticipation of the event to be headstrong, generous, parochially communal busy (and proudly this is a very typical dynamic in SE Asian cultures where major events are times home cooks and traditional banquets take center stage). I am an inveterate eater of anything smothered over rice, say a thick but soluble gravy like the Japanese curry robust with carrots and smoked peppers. But give/cook me that coconut caramel sauce topped with pickled shallots and maybe some crisp leaves of scallions sprinkled on top— I’m in heaven for that rice again.       

(Flashback: Visiting Hue, Vietnam, circa 2009, resting in a covered wooden bridge/sleeping station with painted flowers motif and dragon carvings around the eaves stretching over a rice field, I solemnly take all my “food” voyages to heart. And poetry is like a small harvest I thank the world for.) 

Silk squash, a.k.a sponge gourd, braised in broiled tomatoes, and through reduction finishing it off with a fresh-cut sprig of oregano (from a coworker) to perfume my red-green sauce, and soon will be ready for ladling over you know what. I have moringa flowers, yes, and they will smile on top of my bowl. Lam had a recipe for Sichuan pepper sauce with garlic and ginger, maple syrup and lime juice, I’m on a menu roll for the next couple of days, truly from inspiration to food on the table. Thanks to my splendid guides.  

(Another flashback: I found a few vintage photos this morning of my field work as grad student at the Ifugao Rice Terraces, Philippines, around the same time I visited Hue. I will transcribe for you a hand-written caption in my journal signifying the phenomenal event any ethnographer researcher would boast. In the related literature segment of my thesis, I remember the theorem “non-locality consciousness” adopted by Quantum Holography science arguing that perception evolving from the cosmic process is reciprocal to a reality that was once a sublime. Indigenous Knowledge… the work of poetry… what I saw there rising towards the sky… was real.)   

From my journal: I really wondered about the rice terraces the wondrous Ifugao had built – of their awareness of its stupendous natural beauty. I had also lived – in Hungduan (inset)– at this most amazing mountain summit of cultivated rice fields and waterfalls. No electricity has touched this place though it’s the 21st century already, but my host, an Ifugao native and winemaker (rice wine), Mary- her “English” name, had an even dignity in the hardscrabble, duty-bound expression on her face, unswept by the forest and rice culture oasis where she lives, near the sky. And why is that? I honestly didn’t ask her, though I should’ve when appropriately recoverable from our conversations. During my time with her, she never once marveled about the beauty of her environment as much as it had imbued me and my research. Instead, in her mythic eyes conjured the work to be done in the "high fields.”

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