“EVERYTHING IS WAITING FOR YOU”

 In Essex Market on the Lower East Side of Manhattan is this beautiful art installation sandwiched among food shop purveyors, farmers, butchers and restaurants as in strip pop ups. It represents a “slice of life” at housing tenements during the migration era settled by immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. “When I eat I feel connected with people I can no longer see or be with.” So they brought over the cuisine and the nostalgia from their former motherland. This imagery touched me: reminiscing the giant cooks in my life, my mother and my grandfather, no longer around. It is amazing their memories transcend in my eating, and because of them I never short change what I cook to eat well as they did. I can only “replicate” them like this, and nothing more.

My ex had told me to come here and see how much the market has changed since I left. Years ago it was bodega-style and rustic and steps away from the subway stairs surrounded by homeless people. That was the borough's charm it didn’t have anymore. To my sadness. Now the market is housed inside a modern atrium with an architectural edge showcasing a scalloped A-frame skylights - not to mention the tiny tenement museum on the basement floor next to La Sucre patisserie and the eclectic coffee roasters specializing in mushrooms blends - giving it a totally unfamiliar feel. But I came anyway and must have a taste of quintessential New York food if they were still around. (I used to go for the san cocho, a Dominican Republic-style yucca and whole corn soup, and the Honduran pupusa, a sweet-infused flat bread.) 

As a (food) traveler I open my experiences to accept the new and appreciate the old fading away from the gentrification of what it means to eat in this  “gilded” age. The poet Rilke once said: “Space reaches from us and construes the world.” I am filling that void now, as I am filling my stomach with everything bagel. 

Foodnote: Title of blog directly quoted from David Whyte’s poem.

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THIS CHRISTMAS

 

Guiso de Pato is a traditional holiday dish prepared in Peru, and my host parents in New York where I’m visiting is making that food especially special for our gathering this evening. I am listening as it is cooking; in the braise are spices, herbs, ripe tomatoes and vegetables galore thickening in the simmer while the duck pieces (I am told fresh butchered that morning) are sweating out, deepening the umami profile to taste. It will be slow-cooking for about three hours with this secret ingredient: chocolate wine. 

Next on the stove is called Pimiento Relleno, in translation: stuffed green bell peppers that’s baked to golden brown around the rim because of the cheese and bread crumbs (the filling being prepared on the burner is a mix of chickpeas and sweet corns in butter bay leaf sauce. I love the team-ship of my hosts in the kitchen. They are so relaxed yet their home-cooking skill is palpable. The soufflé is also being prepared, a very light textured spinach frittata thas so amazing to smell. 

I am helping set up the table, as you are seeing it in the picture chosen. The silverware are treasured out of the basement, and this antiquity will highlight the evening’s celebration of long held friendship. I have to make a qualification for the aforesaid statement for narrative clarity. My hosts are my dear friends, the woman of the house I had worked with in a New York restaurant before when I was a newly minted line cook, while she ran the prep station for thirty years. She became a de facto mentor (aside from the chef) who had taught me resilience, laughter and harmony while at work. I owe her a principle in life I still practice to this today. Good will. She had been the mother I didn’t have and had taken me under her wings. The professional kitchen was a tough place but she showed me how to build strength in times of frustration and bone- tiring shifts. If she had done it all these years, no reason I can’t. Her favorite expression at work was “piano, piano.” “You are doing everyone a favor by slowing down, minding only your focus and patience,” she constantly advised. “Tranquilo, Gary.” Relax, my friend. I am here.

I had been away from New York a few years and I had missed the one friend I call family. This Christmas, finally, is our reunion. and I am in the Big Apple again, and today was warmly welcomed home. 

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WAI

It is logistically closer for me to get to Waikiki than to Kihei town which is only seven miles away. Flying takes only twenty five minutes! And besides, I don’t have to deal with beachgoer parking in Maui when Bus 20 from Honolulu airport takes me directly in the heart of Chinatown where I want to be, I pay $2.75 fare, and less than that is my carbon footprint. There’s only one reason “wai” I go, which will not be a surprise: Food. (Not a lot of food qualifying but for the one distinct cuisine I go after: Dim Sum.) For under a month and half I had gone three times taking a plane and forgoing my own home island and hopping to another cosmopolitan island called Oahu. I also go to the same restaurant ever since - and order the same food. Three’s a charm because there’s a bonus food treat this trip: the elusive doh wah, a Taiwanese specialty dessert. I had attempted my first time to the island to search it, only to prove vain. “I didn’t make it this morning,” said the market stall owner, “when the curd doesn’t look good in consistency, I won’t do it.” That was an impressive statement - it was like assuring the unreadiness of wine in barrels, or a cake which hasn’t set. The second time he was closed (probably for not the same reason; since he is the only game in town, I have to believe I was too late coming that morning and he was sold out. That’s usually the case for small batch cooking, which is what I like.) “What size?” the man wearing reading glasses asked. I happily answered: “Medium.” “Spoon?” “Yes, sir.” 

It is the last weekend before Christmas. When I return to my flat tonight, intentionally before leaving for Oahu I scrubbed kitchen the well, I know there won’t be food in the fridge, both compartment doors looking inside would be empty. I won’t be cooking anymore this year that’s coming to a close. In a couple of days I fly again, but this time my destination is more than six thousand miles away to New York City. It’s for reasons more than food I’m

going, although emotionally it is a subterfuge answer for “why.” Last Friday a coworker, knowing about my planned vacation,  had asked what the first thing I’d do when I get there. Ready answer: “To my favorite Ethiopian restaurant in Bushwick, Brooklyn.” And he laughed out loud knowing me too well always a hungry stomach (I would like to think, hungry soul). And what I didn’t tell him is deeply more interior. But that’s O.K.  I got a call from my hotel room in Waikiki this morning. It was the food truck owner I was applying to for a part-time cook job starting the New Year. He said he wanted to show me its kitchen, that it was all set, and he didn’t mind picking me up at the airport when I arrive and go straight to the truck (he is a good friend of my landlady, and through affinity there’s  a bridge there, and I was grateful for his deed). I live in Wailuku, Maui now, and nothing prevents me from reaching my next food adventure. 

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ROOTS

"On Dec. 11, my husband and I will fly to Paris, reviving a holiday tradition that was set aside during the pandemic. For more than two decades, we celebrated Christmas at friends’ homes there, and then friends and family would come to our place nearby for New Year’s Eve. Last year, away from Paris, I missed looking down our dinner table and seeing people I care about, together and joyful. I missed feeding my friends. I missed the hugs at midnight and the macarons minutes after."

-- Dorie Greenspan, The New York Times

Oat milk foams well whisking quick in a saucepan on high heat with brewed coffee - and the result is a homespun perfect cappuccino, spiked with cacao. It is hot chocolate weather today, a December rain on the islands that brought down northern cool, and it is cozy to warm up with both hands around the cup after that bite from a pastry-filled cookie. The perimeter shadow in the photo inset is the natural evasion of light when cloud cover washed out the sky, and in my dinning room/kitchen feels like winter is outside, and strangely. (If global climate conditions are truly changing, then some aspect of Portland or New York on Maui's atmosphere is a surprise gift, a Nordic overcast charm I don't mind at all.) The wild birds however are relentless in the garden and are frolicking and singing umbrage in the trees with their brood. My Christmas lights are on in the living room, a merino wool blanket on my lap while writing, and reading Dorie's recipe and preparation for bûches de Noël bring back so many good memories of holiday gatherings and gifts giving. Like her, I bake these gifts myself - those missed traditions making ginger shortbread cookies, upside-down glazed fruit cakes, and sweet pretzel with sesame seeds breads - and make boxes out of old food magazine covers and wrap my treats for my dear friends uniquely and classy. Like Dorie, I miss my international friends tremendously, I miss cooking for big celebrations and parties in general, socially the world has changed since 2020, and the yearning to normalize things again is deep.

The deluge at Iao forest this morning was hard pouring as I climbed through the canyon rocks from my waterfalls swim, watching every step around slippery slopes rooted with smashed fallen fruits. (Always outdoors, I carry a camouflaged backpack intentionally heavy with books and river stones in the side pockets for posture support and running stability.) But I kept my sweatshirt inside to keep it dry for when I reach the park, I was cold just with shorts, yet the rain felt special. Roots ecologically established in undisturbed woods protect the mountain from landslides, its earth-ground upheld tight by standing trees. I've always felt safe here in the wild, albeit my city upbringing. Roots protect me. And they do follow me. As far as where I've been.    

       

      

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