ANOTHER COOK

 

While making mashed kohlrabi simmering for now in silky almond milk in a sauce pot (later when tender and out of cooking heat will add German butter, salt and pepper, chives), and while picking out more foliage and tendrils for braising (see photo) I was thinking of another cook. She is a master vegan chocolate fudge baker and an old friend living in golden So. California with her husband and four rambunctious corkie-terriers. The quality of her work is consistent, and her measures are precisely what you’d expect to render the ingredients their devilishly good balance on each bite and melting in your mouth. When I visited family last weekend in L.A., I made sure that my carryon luggage would have enough space for the goodies she’d made sure I took back home, because I wanted nothing else to bring to Hawaii but her fudge and more. She is a trained classical calligraphy painter and her homemade chocolate boxes for me have exquisite liner notes inside naming each ingredient and their terroir origin for the cacao (it was Venezuelan fair trade), and everything is organic sourced and nothing sweetened (she said that the Philippine virgin coconut oil she uses has natural sweetness to it, and the pralines and dark cherries she adds at the center have them too, in nuts fruitful). It might be a surprise for you reader to reveal this, but in spite of my strict herbivore leafs and fruits diet, I have a “unsweet” tooth - but only one cook in the world will ever satisfy that craving. There is something about her fudge that the longer you keep them (in keep mine in the freezer; I consume one fudge nugget before bedtime, stretching out twenty four pieces for almost a month) the better they get as they old - they don’t turn into stone - instead sustaining a ganache-gelato-firm-but-velvety texture and the chocolate cacao like molten soufflé. I love it and have not tasted anything quite like it in expertise and deliciousness, not even in the famed maisons of Paris. Honestly it’s hard to translate “love” to result in cooking, but I think this feeling truly materializes in the effort of finding the best-sourced ingredients combined with a recipe of thoughtfulness to gift them to friends and in turn transliterating food into love-box of chocolates. There is something calligraphic in the swirls set on the skin of her chocolates like something “penned” by a technical hand yet dipped in a fountain “ink” of fudge. Writing/painting are artists acts of love. Yes, those too. Kohlrabis are bulbous root vegetables larger than beets and waxy red potatoes but blend their tastes together with hints of ginger and fennel. They are done in the milk, super tender, and now it’s time to butter them up and season, fold in and mash, and sprinkle herbs. I wish my good friend was here to join me for lunch. Although it’s just been a week, I already miss her. It’s still tough to be alone no matter how good you eat. That’s why I keep writing, writing, writing … to feel love. 

“Time like a genie stands everywhere as though a shoreless reflection of the universe, at times becoming deception of thought, at times unthinkingly the awareness of beauty.” (Meeraji)

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TIME TO EAT

 

In most cultures, this call to table is an obligatory gathering of the family unit, and the home brigade responds to eat together with gusto. Lolo (grandfather) was the head announcer of the communal feast — and it was always a time when appetites were at their peak to charge the dining hall for the best seat (but there was always plenty of food to come around for everyone). As a youngster, eating had impressed upon me a sociological context as belonging to an intimate and rambunctious group who had actually loved me to my heart’s content, and cooking was designed in my household for exactly that purpose. And what I was proudest of was that my late mother was Lolo’s favorite family chef (over my other aunties) because she was exceptional on all counts running the kitchen and presenting the banquet magnificent. This inheritance is very clear to me now as I carry in my full heart the tradition embodying my grandfather’s invitation to eat and my mother’s cooking on par with hers from everyone in my closest circle know and delight about not to miss if I was at the kitchen. I did exactly that gathering today with friends=family at our reunion in Los Angeles to rally around a loved one indexing a health boost — and my clear purpose  was to cook healing food for  the soul with a company of laugher and good energy more potent than any prescribed medicine could give on the clock. My French lentil soup was a butternut squash and celery broth concoction sweet enough for the shaved Brussel sprouts and kale marry into with crystal simplicity elevated by chives herbs. My salad was a playful ensemble of edamames, pearl radishes, yellow cherries, dates and micro greens classical dressed with nothing more to wit than freshness. To awaken the palate in others is why I cook for the life of me — meaning: this is how I love you, as I was so loved as a child of food.

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TRAVEL (FOOD) RETROSPECTIVE

"It's Christmastime in Hanoi again and the Metropole Hotel is lit up like an amusement park. In the courtyard, a monstrous white tree with bright red ornamental balls towers over the swimming pool. The decorative palms shine blindingly bright with a million tiny bulbs. I'm on my second gin and tonic and planning on having a third, settled back in a heavy rattan chair and feeling the kind of sorry for myself that most people would be very content with. There's incense in the air, buffeted about by the slowly moving overhead fans; a sickly-sweet odor that mirrors perfectly my mixed feelings of dull heartache and exquisite pleasure. I often feel this way when alone in Southeast Asia hotel bars-- an enhanced sense of bathos, an ironic dry-smile sorrow, a sharpened sense of distance and loss. Today, this feeling will disappear the second I'm out of the door."  

(Anthony Bourdain)

Xiamen, China, ca. Oct. 2018: 12 hours layover, I existed immigration with a day pass and headed out to find local food - anywhere the airport bus took me was fine; it was doing a roundabout of the city, according to the map, with drop off points you can hop on, hop off as you wished. With no language and geographic orientation where I was, I rode along a coastline-route and went with the flow watching a new country unfold before me on the fly. Entering the first commercial district stop, there were manual bicycles and clean taxis on the avenues, a red temple and signs of workweek bustle, although benign, I got off and told myself, Let's see what happens. I followed the path were people worshiped (it is universal, I see, that food is always followed by sacrifice here - I couldn't agree more) so there I was incense-burning and bowing heartfelt, forward and back. Shortly after, around the corner of the plaza leading downstairs, there it was: a hawkers open food court and noodle shops! if "heaven" were surely upstairs, it was to find a "hell" of a time just below to feed the hungry, earthly soul (not to mention jetlagged). It took one translation app on my cell phone to communicate what I was looking for, and flashing it politely to a kind stranger willing to speak with me, he said, in return quite quickly, Come over here (from Cantonese), waving me the foot direction. Whole crawfish spicy noodle soup was a staple to the Xiamenese, given their proximity to fresh sea-catch daily. The complexity of the broth came from directly flash-frying in the scalding extreme, concave heat of the wok awaiting ginger and green onions essences to internalize in the shellfish flaming up with rice wine to then materialize the magic of your soup with the requisite local beer in hand (simple and grand). Often in my travels I wonder why when your food is so good the concept of heaven is almost always blurred when something that is hot and tangible and divine hits your tongue, and why give this up now? I had been a follower of Bourdain's "spirit" through his world food odysseys - and it's because of his kindred attention to writing about it so well (like a poetic "Captain"). The man I followed to this noodle shop actually owned the place, and we hit it off thanks to google translate and eye contact that gestured humanity and sincerity without words. His young family arrived in tow, a little later, and I was introduced and that I was only visiting for a few hours, and his wife without batting an eyelash commandeered the table and told her husband, Let's take him around town on our motorbikes, quick let's all go now with the kids. Their toddler in front of Mr. and I behind, on another bike was Mrs. with their daughter, and off we went on a joy ride to god knows where, I merely trusted the universe to show me a good time, Far East breeze of the Orient blowing through my face, and holding tight on the backseat grate, I let all my trepidations go...  and it was a super day, deep, unforgettable Samaritan hospitality speaking a common language from our hearts because of food. I am still in touch with the family from Xiamen. And this instant friendship story I will always remember with gratitude is for them.      

 

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GREEN PAPAYA, SEACOAST TOMATO MUNG BEAN SOUP

     My recipes since my time on the island have all been consistently about the ingredients with a simple technique on the scale of braising at its heights soup. I only have vegetables and fruits to work it, you see, and at their rawness are edible, so doing much more of cooking could be draconian. Essentially their individual flavors are independent from the primary taste enhancer salt; I instead extract their juices in the symphony of cooking them down gently with a “baton.” Olive oil and ginger water are enough. At times unsweetened coconut milk. Herbs from your garden picked last minute the final touch. Anthony Bourdain once said that the world is a sad place without a bowl of beef and clams rendang laksa soup found in Singapore street markets - and that’s what it took to heal a broken heart. NYC in Chelsea opened recently a hawkers hall booming with South East Asian soup stalls importing traditional renditions of everything he loved the world for in noodles and spiced broth. His legacy lives on. Last night I started reading another one of his books, I don’t know but… I wanted him around when I needed a “captain” most. If he were a poet he’d be like John Ashbery, a poet’s poet, because of rugged romanticism and intellectual Bohême to carry on like them hand in the wooden spoon. Look at this soup. I added carrots and wing beans for complexity and more color to brighten me up. Roses are not just red. Look at the herbs. Herbs are not just greens. At the end of the day I am only a cook indebted to my poetry mentors. And in this milieu I live like them, like angels now. 

“The creative process by which the final dishes are arrived at is an absolutely fascinating stream [of thought.]” - A.B.

How to: boil the split mung beans with the wild foraged tomatoes and papayas together in pure water over them until half tender adding the remaining vegetables then, the carrots and wing beans, some chili flakes and olive oil, black pepper, adjusting water level of broth naturally thickened of mung starch, add ginger water, and let them all fall their grace in the pot you soup. Taste for balance. More sweetness when mild add coconut milk. And kiss them with the herbs before you eat.  

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