GOOD FOR THE HEART

Dim sum, in Honolulu. I skipped the decadent potstickers in bamboo baskets for the medicinal ginger rice soup made-to-order, with a plate of translucent steamed Chinese broccoli donning tiny yellow blossoms for a cardio-sound breakfast. At first the intrepid servers didn’t understand the logic of my untraditional order, but when they saw me assembling my food, they were happily impressed (I got the feeling it reminded them of what the table looked like at this exact time in the morning in their home village, what I was doing they did back in the old county). One of them watched me approvingly and nodded a retrospective smile, as if I’m no longer a foreigner but a long lost kin, eating my vegetables with oysters sauce using chopsticks so well and sitting crossed-legged on the dirt ground. When she delivered the hair-strand thin sliced ginger I had asked for, she knew what I was up to with my congee: kick it up with raw spice.

The slow stroll after food on the boulevard under an umbrella to the art museum is also good for the heart in start of summer outside leading inside the galleries. I read a translation of an Edo-era poem from a scrolled inscription of ink, silk and gold saying that the gap between nodes of reed leaves at the narrow inlet was like time she would never give to courting. An O’Keefe green and white painting of Iao Valley, a summit scene of her waterfalls and grey clouds to bear. A small library after passing through the modernists hall I entered and where I read for a time, I was alone, and steeped my mind learning about Spanish-times weaving using pineapple fibers like chiffon fabric and embroidered fancily with filigree to make elegant gowns for first and second ladies of municipal governments during colonial 18th century Philippines. Islamic tiles bubbling fountains. A bougainvillea courtyard framed around a living clear blue skylight. My writing box. Waiting for the red dragonfly to land on the juxtaposed water garden of lotuses purposely designed I think to transcend, or escape the awareness for something more sublime. On the rocks Perrier I poured, and you give your heart a break. 

And this by far is the best for the heart. So, I was on the airport-route bus from downtown returning to Maui and I had packed a few food in my tote shortly after I had arrived in the morning and stopped by the Macau bakery in Chinatown for some tea cake, and across the street inside the wet market of food stalls followed my nose to the Vietnamese lady's window boiling peanuts on shells a buck for a cup, I got those and also a handful of fat lychees just picked with leaves, according to the madam. They were all in plastic bags and stowed in my bag for later consumption after the museum and that time came to eat them and I was at the very back of the bus with my feet up. I was zen minding my relaxed mind and body and enjoying my snacks, breaking shells, popping the legumes in my mouth, alternating with the fruits that were so ono refreshing juicy, when suddenly I remembered the madam at the stall going out around her station to weigh the lychees for me saying: "You only get this so little want more tha why you so sexy!" - all on my breath snide - and I started howling out a loud laugh-chuckle-gag remembering her statement while on the bus, it was an insane comment so inflected with a wonderful Vietnamese accent you would hear at comedy improvs from standups making good fun of accents (I remember a show in Seattle with this hip girl hapa talking nail salons stories - go to any one in America and you'll find nail associates there from Saigon) - she was mimicking them so realistically, and hearing the madam talked that way to me in the morning, it made my day converged with laughter, my heart was having a great time being alive pumping out for me all the meaning of life worth living for to release a cosmic happiness more than anything in the universe could satisfy, my heart felt like a cranking eternal sun piece wheeling with love... as long as a smile could give.    

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A CLEAN PLATE

 The virtue of appetite depends largely on superlative cooking brokered by the epigenetic cultural norms of a particular cuisine. The blog is an ode to the French-style of waste-no-taste served you - because their culinary tradition is a pantheon to the country and a matter of life or death. (And the world knows that fact, without hyperbole-speaking.) The reduction achievement of wine and roots vegetables sauce, for example, is the "essence" of a bourguignon, and this braising down technique is like extracting perfume from botanicals, and no high place on earth can you find alchemic flavor to gaga about except from the bottom pooling under all exquisitely-prepared French food (the wisdom of the baguette to sop up all these nectar par excellence is the point exactement!) And quite frankly, I don't have reservations for it. The Chez Mamy (11th arr. in Paris) is a splendid bistro you can practice doing as the French do. 

Back home yesterday I braised dandelion greens with cherry tomatoes and kalamata olives until almost macerated and have extruded their conforming juices and added slightly salted pure water to soak up these essences with my aim to develop steaming vapor for when I drop the fresh spinach and walnut raviolis so as to cook through the dough enhanced. My multi-seeded mini baguette was buttered overwhelmingly in the toaster until the fatty cream bubbled and the edge lines of the bread burnt. Butter (le beurre) is the ineffable secret to French gastronomy as if adding it to perfection isn't enough to swoon your palate. When I visit my cousin, a photographer in Paris, hours of conversations go by with clean plates switching seamlessly from aperitif to main to salad to cheese, turned around by the keen wait staff in sync with the emotive quality of our dining at Chez. (I believe "leftovers" is disrespectful to the French - with all the passion executed upon your meal.) I actually "Tik-Toked" a short home video on my cell (albeit without publishing it on that site; I don't have any social media account online except for this blog) the actual commencement of the sopping on my plate, I figured something memorable to do here on the island, this type of eating I rarely do - and I loved it to death!   

 "My roots are Victorian but I have been modernized by life and my children. My book reflects my life and, as you may see by its timely contents, I have not stood still. So I am bringing you not only much that is old and memorable but also much that is new. Many simply prepared dishes, low in cost, have been included to meet the change in our domestic home front. Every effort has been made to encourage the cook in her daily grind by lifting everyday food out of the commonplace." (The Joy of Cooking, ca. 1932 edition, forward note by its timeless author Irma S. Rombauer) 

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“SOUL FOOD”

When I’m running on empty, Sal Paradise fills me up— a true friend not just on paper. Cookies and milk; cherry pies for two fruits bursting at the seams; one night when I still called him roomie he brought home after a late shift at Mana Foods a veggie wrap filled with collards and tofu in tahini sauce for my midnight snack. He used to be the cheesemonger at the health food store cutting up Bulgarian fetas and manchegos for a living, and he would bring those home, too, with a seeded baguette, mindful that I’m vegan and I could only nibble on those charcuteries for the sake of sharing. In short, he was thoughtful, and he cared about his perpetually hungry friend— and feeding him soulfully. Once years ago when I was stuck “On the Road” in Xinjang, China and didn’t have enough money to return to the States, guess who saved me? Also once upon a time in Nagusbu, Philippines, grilling baby octopus and flying fish on coconut husks smoking of oregano leaves to the delight of the locals (I was teaching poetry at the National Arts High School then and was on a random break just to get away), I wrote this question in the sand on the beach and texted it to Sal: Where do we go from here?

He was, needless to say, my existential brother and “life’s journey-mate,” we created our friendship all these years through the auspices of Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), also known as Jack Kerouac, “The Beat” drummer and God of our hearts. I have missed Sal since he left the island. We used to hang out at the refuge on Sundays before sundown, on a trail along a costal savanna a mile-and-half out to the river that meets the sea, and just sit out on the rocks not speaking but gazing at the marriage of terrestrial and oceanic events that run deep. He tripped whenever I did this fancy thing I learned as a lad with pigeons clapping my hands like cymbals and producing a resonant sound that had an echo-magnetic effect to the spectacular landing of these birds at the confluence like archangels as if I was calling them and they summon down on my command to drink brackish water and refresh and bathe in the intertidal stream. Sal I believe took a video of that “saintly” event on his phone and at the end of the day wondered how I did that, how the pigeons listened to me. I said, I don’t know, man, I was just trying to be a kid. Or like a "master" to own my game. Or my fate, in retrospect, that is still sounding off, beating out of my heart to the direction of the poetic stage where I can be truly home.  “What birds plunge through is not the intimate space in which you see all forms intensified. Out in the open you are denied yourself and disappear into that vastness. Space reaches from us and construes the world” (Rilke). In the story, Sal Paradise kept up with his “soulmate” but only and sadly “on paper” after parting ways, having to go where both needed to go separately following their own callings, writing to each other once in a while, but an umbilical had always tied them around each other in friendship wherever that destiny they followed took them, and in the end… thought of each other, thought of each other, thought of each other.

 

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RYE’S BOWL

     Yesterday when my sister called she asked what I was cooking. I said it was complicated to explain, well, just please read the blog. I was exhausted from my workout and wanted to put the food in my body and nourish it fast. I couldn't even say it was a "rice" bowl: using rye berries as substitute for the grains and sea asparagus dashi as the cooking liquid; and while that was simmering slivered almonds were toasting in the bread oven to add to the rye "pasta" for flavor depth a few minutes before al dente. And you guessed it: alfalfas on top to serve. Yes, I could've said simply rice bowl because it was like "that," and I suppose it's a veritable trade. But it wasn't at all - for lack of a thick sauce, grilling the ingredients, and the requisite egg commonly assembled for that namesake, and normally could be had at food trucks everywhere they're parked, or get the famous Korean bibimbap. If you have read my blog before (perhaps follow it; much thanks to that), how I season food is pretty spare (oil, salt, spice, acidity) - and I let my ingredients (mostly vegetables, fruits and legumes) speak for themselves. And I'm never disappointed. The Jewish deli flavor to this bowl of rye, seeds, the dill quality of the asparagus is complimented with the raw freshness and very cleansing effect on the palate from the sprouts. If you happen to have Bulgarian feta, add crumbles around the bowl and swirl a little olive oil for added decadence. You see, my eldest sibling wouldn't have time to listen to all that jazz, yet she always gives me the blessing to write. 

Notice the germinating seedbed at background to the bowl photo, no, they're not the alfalfas but future micro super greens and kale growing on my "garden" table, and the kit I got on Market St. In about ten days I will have food grown home and literally inside my kitchen. When sis calls again next time, weekends is routine to catch up, I will proudly and happily tell her, I'm eating leaves. PS. She actually has a great garden of her own (a real one backyard) with prolific fruit trees (peaches, grapes, pears) growing the California way and easy-to-grow vegetables like eggplants, bell peppers and okras, which are quite versatile ingredients for stews and soup dishes. She has an amazing green thumb and, news to everyone: a much better cook than yours truly. She got it from our late Mom, always acing home food; the classics I could never replicate but she could (and I would eat with abandon when I visit her and feel always nostalgically like a child). It's music to my ears when it's my turn to ask what she's cooking, and every time sis tells me what, I feel that "She's" really there... for us.   

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