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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