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)