ABOUT THE SOURSOP, ET AL.

The lady at the juice stand looked at me puzzled wondering defeated I insisted on pure fruits only crushed in ice, No milk and sugar, she asked, leaving her booth to go around and grab the order from her display. Her son helping her reiterated that I was vegan in case it wasn't clear to her the first time, but even if she did understand her reluctance in preparing my smoothie expressed an unusual customization to the summer drink altering her menu that wouldn’t taste good without the cream and sweets, forgoing the pineapple chucks too blew her mind. She did it anyway, I saw her back in the kitchen over the sink picking out the seeds from the soursop scooping out only its very white custardy flesh loaded with super metrics of vitamin C. This was the reason for my choice. She finished blending the drink, her son handed it to me and said, Six and half bucks, please, I gave seven and said, Keep the change, he smiled and nodded, his mom as I left their stall reassured me, It’s a little sour, and I approvingly smiled as well and thanked her with, I know, Ma'am, and it's worth it.

…

In grad school I had a classmate that strongly resembled him and his demeanor, it was strange to see this likeness at the expense of juice, so to speak, our eye contact was inscrutable yet familiar, our small talk shy on his part but sincere just as was him back in the day. I didn’t mention this connection/coincidence/de ja vu at that time waiting for my drink, it was irrelevant I supposed, but the memory was strong and it was good to remember those days gone by.  We were research partners in human ecology class and did side trips purposely discovering indigenous food through acculturations. Yes, the soursop was one of them, as this was, its juice and flesh a traditional and medicinal tonic extracted by the ancient tribe of our study whose practice still exists today, not to mention other beauties from their plant-knowledge recipes and viticulture sense-making, for example, a cognac quality wine from heirloom rice grains golden as the sun.       

…

Last night when I was down in bed and couldn’t sleep a salad recipe popped in my head: endive (pronounced ahn-deev) with cured capers strung around golden beets noodles and dressed in simple oil garnished over of tamarind-sweetened walnuts. It was a delightful thought and put me to rest assured of what tomorrow will bring. Food to me is a combination of hindsight and planning ahead, keen to be original yet repeating classical styles. I want to surprise myself, and the feeling is good. This devotion to my kitchen duties is for my health, for writing, and for some amount of humble happiness dear to me when I’m cooking. Unbeknownst in my fridge when I opened it this morning sat split yellow lentils and rye berries risotto par-boiled the Friday of and also realized in the vegetable crisper compartment lay sunflower and alfalfa sprouts and an abundantly fat plastic bag containing Maui peas shoots from Mana. Now, what to eat for lunch suddenly came easy by mixing all these foods up after steaming the microgreens in butter and the juice of Castelvetrano green olives which I also have in the fridge. It was definitely worth waking up for and documenting my home food here in words (and hopefully replicating it on your own in your home) for you. For health and happiness.         

Read more »

TWO OF A KIND

A look back of home food in New York City, ca. 2017.

Recipe: Argentinian empanada topped on luscious salad

Yes, dough made from scratch one of those all-purpose did a batch and frozen and retrieved as needed. A stick of unsalted French butter to a cup and a half of stone-ground flour kneaded with a little cold water and a pitch of kosher to a ball, do ten times over and plastic wrap. The presence of the rolling pin here is for texture-smoothness and distribution of the fatty solids of the butter to equanimity. The unseen filling is cooked spiced quinoa and boiled kale and ready to shallow fry in olive oil low heat (the idea is rollout to paper-thin the dough so when rendered in the very hot pan the light crisp flakiness of the crust is coming together).  

Harvest and drain well. The culminating idea to float the empanada on greens came from Paris. One evening with cousin in a 9th arr. resto after book hunting all day a boatload of glistening little gem lettuces, endives and caper peppers docked in front of us full-mast with toasted baguette; on the bottom of the plate the bread was already absorbing the tangy creamy yogurt and brillat-savarin dressing. Back in the states anteed up the home salad with the empanada for mouth-watering divinity, biting into the dense crescendo of emulsified grains and greens (and, yes, copied faithfully the yogurt sauce from Paris for my salad to make two of a kind). Dressing: fine yogurt, the brillat (a triple cream brie-like cheese), rose water, shallots, anchovies (can do without), adjust taste balance with salt and pepper whisking thorough in wide bowl for watery viscosity. Play with your salad leaves to toss. Be the captain.          
 

Read more »

CALAMANSI AND STARFRUIT JUICE

     The former flavor is intense acerbic citrus even marginally bitter - but the latter is sweetly sweet for contrast and full of juice. The harvest of the calamansi was pretty mundane: the medium tree at a friend's driveway growing in the side yard, and after work I stopped by to pick some, the house was on the way. And she had the stars separate and said they were from her niece's at the heights. Immediately once home I hand-juiced the two fruits and blended them in a mason jar aiming for a proportion to counteract each other at the same time harmonize their essences. The result is both the color of apricot and its scintillating taste, with a hint of kombucha rainier cherries and passionfruit. Salud!

    A brief walk down memory lane. I grew up around these fruits as natural vitamins intake through my informative years as a lad, at daily breakfast before the school bus came wearing my nicely-pressed Catholic white polo and khaki shorts my meal's companion libation was calamansi juice stirred with white sugar. On weekends at the family farm when it's their season, generally summer starting in March, the stars were a particular delight for me seeing them in trees hanging like model solar systems. We call them in Tagalog "balimbing," cleverly evoking an anthropomorphic idiom to characterize someone as "many sided," as the fruit is shaped that way ridged around five times over crest. I thought it was funny. We got to tease play peers with that expression if they suddenly turned against us, but the condition was immature jealousy and no one became foe. These food symbols were inveterate in my childhood, and the beauty is I grew up and they didn't. Lo and behold, they're still around. 

     It's hard to press on the cross-section of star if you're using a common upstanding reamer. For full juice not wasting a single drop use an artisanal juicer, the heavy all-metal kind, plunging the fruit through head on with the medieval handle. I used the former for absence of the latter equipment but made sure my hand gripped the star tight around so not a drop escaped down the mesh wire and into the glass-capture all. The cala is easy. Slice the tiny citrus in half and press each side with your fingertips over a  fine sieve basket, and make sure you have plenty of calas to make ample juice. When combined, like I said, these two fruits together have a delicious and zippy punch, too floral it could be a wellness shot. But why not? I benefited from cala and star - these motherland fruits - then and now.  

Read more »

JUST EAT!

"That is happiness, to be dissolved in something complete and great."   - Willa Cather

     When I visited my neighbor, Auntie Pattie, yesterday, who was making a bird-feather lei, she immediately pointed under the corner table and offered raw macadamia nuts on shells still dusty in the sack and said to take as much as I wanted (she even handed me a plastic bag, here, put them here). Auntie is an artisan by commission, living in a mix-use home doubling as craft shop by day, with her longtime partner Auntie Lynn as co-owner, two generous souls who've always treated like kin, I have a beautiful chime instrument hanging in my bedroom window handmade by the aunties for my birthday composed of origami paper varnished with resin for wind endurance and assembled to a bronze temple bell from S. Korea for propitious luck; as I am writing this story the bell is ringing good music on its own volition. Sometimes I wonder about my life now far removed from New York City, geographically I have turned around from chaos to serenity, from immensity to simplicity, and to draw from quiet the power of poetry absent prosthesis stimulation (to borrow an ontological term from a book I finished reading last night). By choice other than writing my only recreation here on the island is home cooking, it is an exercise for my health to be sure, but it is also I feel very much deeply a continuity of tradition honoring the influences passed on by loved ones through my informative years around food watching my folks cook and building my imagination for it ever since and ever more - so I just keep "eating." To me food is both material and immaterial, at once a source of energy and a source of beauty, I have a muse in my food. An old friend I miss dearly I am dedicating a tea I'm brewing today sunning under the beach weather outside made to flavor nicely of tarragon leaves and ginger root to pour over ice cubes later unsweetened at around 2, when the heat is on. There is a culinary nomenclature that brings vegetables to their absolute finest and tenderness, and it's lovingly called braise. Chards, collards, broccolini braise is the centerpiece visual of this blog, it is a mound of decadent greens for no holds barred eating, and party to a just-shucked avocado at its most delectable ripeness (my mission is to fully satiate myself this weekend, I need to nourish my round-the-clock metabolism I am not certain why physiologically I am always on overdrive; on the table, too, is a sweet-savory-tangy grain-oats-lima beans bowl with huckleberries, and I will be chasing them all down with sesame milk, protein filled, a new alternative plant-based beverage sold at Mana). All designed on my table are edible realities I consume before their "art" is over - notice the microgreens blurred on the background how lush they are and ready-to-cut salad on stage to my mouth. I don't have a recipe or any prescribed technique for you today, reader friends. I, instead, have only a hunger to feed both physical and existential, therefore I eat. And finally summing up, grateful for your indulgence: I am tied to a writing life like the chime in my bedroom window fed by the spirit of the breeze. And this why I came to the sea.                         

Read more »

"SWEET THOUGHT"

 

"I hope you'll hold your family and friends close. I hope you'll cook for them the best you can. Fellowship ought to be something we all agree is important, however and whatever we cook." 

                                                    (Sam Sifton, NYTimes)

This photo is a "bowled out" vegan cinnamon bun - (the moistest, caramelly, nutty heart of this pastry has already been dissolved in my sweet tooth- craving purposely achieving this reconstituted dessert design) - to up it a notch exponentially over the left field, over the fence for the home run. In the crater is Golden Meadow vanilla ice cream (a Hawaiian institution creamery) and around is a lake of frothy espresso brewed in a French press using, again, island-grown beans. The result is a "bread soup" of the Dominique Ansel order, the famed pastry chef who rocked the Lower East Side of Manhattan with his invention of the cronut. My version is a cake within I can eat, too, rendered in the pudding it evolved by a permeation method called confectionary science, a buoyancy-and-displacement at once with milk and coffee, tasting of decadent honey and the butter apple of a tarte tatin. ("Neither science nor the arts can be complete without combining their separate strengths. Science needs the intuition and metaphorical power of the arts, and the arts need the fresh blood of science. E.O Wilson, Consilience, The Unity of Knowledge.) Tip: make sure you use a fresh-toasted cinnamon bun that its convection steam inside is scalding hot when you hollow it out before scooping the ice cream in in order to melt and infuse around the walls and lip rim of the bread and sink with the espresso in marriage. And spoon attack (don't wait)!

It's the long weekend and I have a couple more days of rest and to take things heart easy, and devoting time to read prodigious as I can given so much time on my hands for peace. Taking the Lfyt car service this morning to Whole Foods at 7am when it opened and I was practically alone at the store and shopping for a few groceries was so laid back having it to yourself was almost like a walk in the park, like Central Park, in the summer of my content. What I love about living in Maui now is just that thought— a small island but with so much space for beautiful natural conditions to inculcate... The microgreens seeds have sprung from their mulch bed, and with their inch or so growth are ready to be taken out from the dark storage room where they've been waiting in a light-deprived enclosure vital for germination. Now they're in my all-windows-no-curtains-day bright dinning room to photosynthesize their salad leaves stage ready to be picked give or take 7-to-10 days... The avocado trees on the island are in fruit again, Iao Valley oasis mountain abloom again of July flowers... True that I am alone here on Maui (my family and closest kin and childhood friends are on the mainland), but I am never lonely. Yes, I sorely miss them when the holidays come around when I can't make it back due to work obligations and/or money needed to be saved. But for now, I am a writer of sweet thoughts, and I am celebrating for all these words are worth reaching them.       

    

 

Read more »