CREAM OF CAULI AND KALE

 

And cherry on top (with enough for a dipped dessert). 

Leaving solo for a few years now (since my departure from NYC), I suppose I have proudly picked up my '"fast food" cooking skills - (it didn't take long for me to sear a whole washed head of cauli in a deep pot with oil and W. African spices, and when scalding and smoking add water and salt, then cover with lid; while the high heat compresses the steam and cooks the head good, after about eight minutes reduce heat to medium; and while simmering prepare your kale, leaves only, wash and wring them in filtered water, then add to pot, letting all macerate and liquefy) - but without compromising quality. 

For one, the food-growing ethos here on the island are producing exceptional vegetables; and two, a weekend is always a time to write - and that's my love now. I was really surprised when I had found the cherries at Tamura's yesterday for cheap (under 3 bucks for a quarter pound), and I got two packs. This morning I pulled them out from the fridge after my swim, and boy the refreshing sweetness popped in my mouth! And I was hungrier than ever. (Truth: I don't have a car and I walk a couple of miles from my place to Iao Valley through a winding and rolling forest-y road, with a weighted backpack for body strengthening; I leave at 4:30am because I want to catch the sunrise at the spring at around 6 when I arrive on top, and I don't eat anything except coffee; instead I chant and meditate on the road for endurance.) And by the time I make it back home, I'm about to melt. And that's why I had learned to cook incredibly fast to save my life, so to speak. 

Luckily a local man and his wife gave me a ride on back of their pick up and dropped me off at Market street. On our way I had the view of the mountain and the scenic road and for a second when windblown I had a glimpse of one of my past travels to Cameron Highlands, Malaysia (visiting a tea plantation), I had also hitched hike that time and was seated on the corner of a small flatbed truck, and having a time of my life. I don't remember if I had anything to eat on the road to Cameron but everything there was wild - the scenery, the weather, and the heart of the traveler passing through a foreign country and saying to himself come what may I had a journal in my pack.  

So to the right is the photo of cherries dipped in melted truffle fudge. The soup was superb - really healing and restorative - but this "sundae" is a treat. As to plunge in the sofa after full of food, and relax all day long.   
 

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JAMAICAN MOFONGO

 

     I was reading a fiction piece in The Review yesterday and one passage described a substantive Caribbean dish using bananas (or plantains) and yam to bind it, and when cooked through was immediately mounded on your plate. This is my version! I am using a made-up title as homage to the roots of the author (I forget if there was a name to it in the piece, but I was familiar with the technique and I believe I have had one of those "mofongos" in the Washington Heights borough of NYC back in the day). My binder here are carrots and ube (quite ubiquitous here on Maui; in other words called purple yams) that were condensed with Maui onions and local dark greens. The trick is very little water (or stock) added, you must combine all ingredients in one go over high heat and let them all bake out in the pot's super conduction. Yes, there will be some edges burnt - but that's the idea rendering the tuber's oozing stickiness to release, and once smoking lift the lid and fold in all your mashed veggies and season (I only used kosher salt and chili pepper flakes to offset the sweetness of the yam). This dish is quite heavy and rich and toothsome (as you can see in the photo) and that's why I am countering this punch with the lightness of a tossed salad of butter lettuce and apples and lemon juice. It's hot food and cold food at once. See if you will enjoy it. 

Returning home from Iao this morning after my swim, I hitchhiked and got a ride (the individual was a state ranger, he had seen me at the park many times before, only now without a car), I wasn't a stranger. He said that beginning this summer end of June the park will be closed for six months for expansion of tourist facilities and making sure visits are organized and parking will make sure entrance fees are paid without exception. He said it would be a massive operation leveling wider the existing facility to accommodate more cars - yet, privately in his Tacoma (I was in back of the truck because of equipment in the front) and got sad - for my beloved mountain. Will it hurt her when those heavy machineries start scouring her sacred grounds? Will trees fall wayward and be cut out of life for birds and chickens? Will sediments and rock debris runoff down the hills to the waterfalls spring and muddle the waters' crystallization? What about the moss's sweetness when undisturbed, what will happen to them when the forest starts to rumble? I didn't convey these sentiments to the ranger, all my reaction was to say, I see. And that I will miss the park tremendously. I was dropped off at the light across the state building and thanked him and said see you around. But six months is a long time. 

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AN OLD RECIPE

 

The Barefoot Contessa lives in the Hamptons (NY), her home by the Atlantic sea, and she has a beautiful show in the food network cooking beautiful things. I love her relaxed demeanor in the kitchen and her tranquil teaching voice going through recipes, measures, temperatures and equipment. She's mellow, focused and homely classy: roast the quartered potatoes and rosemary sprigs on an oiled sheet pan at 400 degrees, and while waiting have a citron drink using those candied grapefruit peels you processed the night before. Whenever I watch the show, I can appreciate her privileged lifestyle because she can inspire you to replicate an ambience in your own life with the gathering forces of culinary artfulness bespoken. The beach supplies the natural lighting in her home and her countertop facing it is like a view deck on a sail. When she cooks, the world around seems alive; it's an elemental dimension I think is capturing beauty even more and it's saying to the cook, Here you are in paradise. Indelible memories I aspire when I set out to work as a cook, and presenting my food is a gathering of details that's like a set to the music of the table. Portland, Ore. was my Hamptons, those days I was "Count," our home was urbane rustic and well-lit around of sky pines, there was a European espresso machine in my kitchen, and our communal long table looked out into a garden wild, and autumn mornings would have on it fresh-baked milky scones in baskets lined with linen. White hydrangeas. Elegant dogwoods. Flurries. I studied works of chefs. The rain I was accustomed to for all its worth over the evergreens of the northwest. It was cozy because of the grey. And when it snowed. 

Milky Scones (adapted from Ina Garten)

1 1/2 c. all purpose flour

1/2 c. cake flour

1/2 tsp. kosher salt

1 stick unsalted Land O'Lakes butter

1 1/2 c. whole fat milk

(Mix all ingredients above, diligently, with rubber spatula first, then by the time to cut in the butter, crumble up the mix with your hands. Pour all the milk and fold in ingredients to a ball. Set in fridge for ten minutes in cellophane.)

Extra flour for kneading

Zest of one small lemon

Dustings of brown sugar and nutmeg 

Brushes of heavy cream

(Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Set your countertop clean and dry and flour around. Unwrap the dough, knead a few times on the floured surface and then shape it nicely to a flat rectangle an inch or so high. You can use a wood crepe turner to smoothen the sides and top of your shaped dough. Sprinkle the zest, the sugar, the nutmeg, in that order, and then brush lightly with heavy cream. 

Cut from the vertical long about four or five equal strands of dough, and with each strand about four squares of pre-scones. Assemble the pieces on a sheet pan buttered or with parchment - I prefer buttering the parchment paper for an easy slide when ready - and stick the scones in the oven for 18 or so minutes, check at 15 when the surface is goldening and aroma is exuding like sweet bread, and harvest on time.)

In Portland, I make scones early and quietly before work, I am and have always been an early riser, and when the morning comes, that's when your loved one is up, a warm kitchen from baking and smelling like a boulangerie in Paris, then both your breakfasts and coffee (or to grab them) are ready. Once upon a time in Venice, Italy we woke up to bread-baking and bialetti coffee brewing and gondolas through the hotel window with view of the spire of San Giorgio Maggiore. That romantic time, to say the least, of food and travel, was indelible.  

        

   

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CELEBRATIONS

When they were wild

When they were not yet human

When they could have been anything,

I was on the other side ready with milk to lure

them,

And their father, too, the name like a net in his 

hands.

- Louise Erdrich, Birth

The gift was a real peacock feather hairclip/side hat showcasing its green glittered tail with eyes, a beauty accessory for church service to know the matriarch is in the house in yellow Sunday dress, because her day has come. And the brunch was to be spectacular: sangria champagne to toast; French-inspired food focused on heavy foliage tomato-cilantro stews with side of lentil rice; mountain apple and spinach salad; rye seeded flat bread; rum cake blueberry compote molten at center; toasted pecans, pickled red pearl onions from Peru for aperitifs' hors d'oeuvre; the family finally gathered under the sun. In a cook's life, these moments are what he lives for, commemorating long histories of friendship and good times and feeding them well. Mom would've been proud of these celebrations he serves.

The surrogate nephew took a moving video of the blowing of the candles around the table while the singing burst, and those who couldn't be there called in on phone in sync. He was blessed at the church in the morning by the priest, and didn't expect this. Before the celebrations begun, the flute glasses where frosted in the freezer and the mint leaves were picked. He ironed his white shorts and floral shirt. Brewed plantation-style coffee. He arranged flowers in vases of blue-violet and white. He felt the kitchen's pulse. 

You have guests over and in a blink of an eye visits leave, and with memories of them will next year save you a date. Our names have endured, and our journeys come full circle there in reunion. We clean up together, and then pack a luggage for there is just one more night. Names, our names, have grown of age like siblings. We embrace. We wave. Friends are transformations and fill the void. And will never forget you. 

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WORK FOR FOOD

     If you look close enough at the photo there is an image of a hula girl on cinder block - and I found her while clearing the side yard this morning half buried in the bio-detritus. I was preparing a food garden, at last, this tiny land had been sitting fallow since I moved here, and now absent of overgrown brush looks to me a perfect herb &vegetable bed for a home farmer. I had missed doing yard work for cultivation (last time experiencing that was when I still lived in Portland, Ore., at an old English-cottage style house surrounded with fruit trees). I'm imagining a raised planter box growing allium bulbs that flower for pollinators and Crop Science-developed seeds that propagate diverse micro-ecosystems like sun berries with rainbow radishes and interspersed along them legume vines that fend for themselves with visiting wings. Summer is just around the corner. It has been a wet April and May on the island, yet the nutrient recharge as its steeping the ground is perfect timing for this work. 

     Harvest in the indigenous knowledge sense is undisturbed in nature. Tribal swidden system in the highlands (I learned years ago in grad school) is a case in point: the forest is a watershed and adjoining a rice terraces cultivation is irrigated from its roots downslope; it is a sun sink and also a buffer shade at different times of the day as earth renews from an inert axis and life abound in vegetated streams. Yet earth's performance needs an instrument in the hands of man. According to the shaman I interviewed (with a translator), a human touch designs the agronomical circuitry of the planet and turns it on. And prayer-chanting, the tribe cupping rice wine in their hands, is its fuel. On the Cordillera mountain my research focus was the role of those chants-in-supplicate to traditional agriculture, and what forms they render to consilience (E.O. Wilson, Harvard emeritus professor, coined this word, and it means: the harmony-transcendence of the astronomic with the anthropomorphic). I remember a classmate of mine in the program how she loved Wilson like a mentor having read all his books and having admired his tenacity to undercover deeper phenomenon and beauty from mere empirical science. She was a hardhat-wearer forester with a heart of a poetess. 

     It might not be a coincidence I have found a statue of  "Gaia" embedded in my garden - the mother of earth. May she bless my work on her land, and may I faithfully earn my keep.               

 

 

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