"ON FOOT"

Travel feeds the soul. Patience Gray, the legendary food writer, followed nature's call to the wild, foreign to her, and built her life around subsistence plants and vines, and peasant agriculture. Her walks to the sea are existential... (While hiking through the refuge this morning, a brilliant friend said that blue light has minerals chromo-active and can be embodied for well-being. And happiness.) The late Anthony Bourdain was this cook's poet-chef, a big fan I am, a follower if only he'd known I carried his passion and taste buds and pen and mind across some of the worlds he's been, feeling I'm him, navigating diverse cultures eating/feasting cuisines and delicacies that go straight to my heart. After visiting a temple in Xiamen, a random local family showed me around their beautiful port city on scooter, and later after a lunch of spicy seafood noodle soup and cold beer, took me to a busy park with their young kids and on tandem bikes, all of us, pedaled through vendors selling sweets and wind flowers in hand and having a great time. One time waiting for my bus in Singapore (to cross over the near border to Malaysia), at the terminal's lunch counter were curry rice bowls with vegetable "parts unknown," fried and smothered, pickled, topped with hard-cooked salted egg, the tastiest dish I'd had all summer long, draining sweat in the heat but feeling all cool! Like Tony. On foot I found a tiny red house restaurant on a sweeping landscape in Eidfjord, Norway offering potato/sorrels/dill/salmon soup with strong bread and brown cheese and had the most peaceful, pristine time under a winter sun. When I wrote a postcard from La Antigua, I printed a fruit photo from my phone and used it as visual to send to my first cousin in Paris. We are kindred in poetry. Whenever, and so frequently when I was still living in New York, I would visit her in France, and at our favorite café in the 11th Arr., we would talk for hours on end, deep talk, art talk, her Walden Pond dream I love the most - and I haven't even touched the salad. Sometimes it's not always food that fills us. There's something greater and cosmic about kinship, about blood friendship, about the bond of love. It definitely feeds the soul.        

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Ginger-Lilikoi-Cacao Coconut Macaroon Cookie & Sand Sage

The plant-based hazelnut milk was simmering in the pan, and the sage essence was flying. The dessert was simple enough to build: the cookie was still intact and moist; the chocolate bar a pure seventy-five percent dark and sea-salted; the natural sweetness of the dried coconut shreds to be released by the milk blend; the melting of the bar to stick the chiffonade of coconut together and the resulting tower can be plopped on the cookie and while still warm put the herb on top. Root spicy with tart and molten ganache flavor profile competing in texture of crumble and toast, rendering the cookie a "warm ice cream" infusion, and the richness of the coconut was broken at last in the crunch, and in the "chocolate sundae" that melts in your mouth. But there's a story to the sage. Once upon a time the ecology of the coastal sandy hill where this herb thrives was eons ago under sea level as evidenced by the lime seashells (and other sediments only belonging to the bottom of the ocean) lay there wasted on the dry mountain like "Ozymandias." The interconnections of two land systems emerged like this is a beautiful wonder. And the sage smells grand. Somewhere between a sea moon night and an oasis of palms. The book The Soul of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman is an archeological poetry reportage of what makes a chef's chef. The evidence of this culinary mastery is surprisingly indescribable in terms of skill and experience in the kitchen. The soul of the chef is lost in his greatest now, and in his legacy to come but stay with us.

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"NUTRITIONAL NEEDS"

Charles Simic has a poem entitled Weather of the Soul, and to serve it up he writes: if it eases a little, send for the boy... and let him bring [food] under your big umbrella.  The butter beans and cherry tomatoes will be prepared gazpacho style, pureed pure in their stock and blended with cucumbers and cantaloupe. Avocado oil will be drizzled after chilling the soup in the fridge, and into the bowl will be a pink plumeria on a basil leaf boat for you to pick carefully and smell, as if delivered by the boy. This is what's imagined in the poem. But the food is real. Real in the sense you have it for lunch, beachfront, with lightly toasted tranches de baguette, served up with a sweet sun tea Meyer lemon. Nutrition plays a part in what taste of goodness brings to your body. These beans are creamy and rich and the tomatoes are sparkly acid, salty and herbaceous, and to sop up a breadful of the soup with your hands to your mouth is an emotional need satisfied bodily but doesn't fill you out. I think Mark Bittman might have said something to that effect of luxurious eating without the guilt and waste. Reversely this dish can be served hot. Add the following to the beans and tomatoes: celery, pumpkin and curly parsley, mashing them all up a la minestrone thick soup. Your preference. But for full dining experience, don't forget about the boy.

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TRADITION NOW

There were rain slugs along the trail to the river, and on the way out were seven peacocks in a straight line, one of which was the beautiful male. It was late afternoon after Easter lunch on the west island. The heavy monsoon came previously in this plentiful valley... How do you celebrate tradition when loved ones are gone? How do you keep going? How do you keep it alive? Find a way in old family food and find something new to add on your plate. A caramel-filled chocolate egg and hot cross buns infused with orange liqueur and studded with walnuts. So they were all there to try: the broiled brussel sprouts, the rutabaga-cucumber-tomato salad, the lentils-rice-olive casserole, the pan de sal (Filipino sweet rolls), and the sweets mentioned never had before. Now two are celebrating distinct elements from different food traditions, but together now in one spirit. The very mild black tea in mason jars was lovely to drink. And the yellow flowers in a pot (kalanchoe) was a gift... Reaching the river it was always in a perfect condition to swim in. The pool has an infinity quality to it set in stone. The path of the waterfalls coming to this was mountain lush everglade. And the seabirds meet at the ecotone downstream to rest and splash themselves before their journey leewards. One wonders what their paths might be in life, what conscious choices they make along the way, what love might mean to them if it had at all spoken again, on their way forward?         

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A FOODNOTE

Reading Sam Sifton today, a Times food writer I follow for his passionate recipes, often with collaboration from his awesome cook friends, well, he started the piece with this quote from a Buddhist teacher: 

"Real fearlessness is a product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world [trickle in] your heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the world. You are willing to share your heart with others.” 

I love cooking in light of sharing, I love the wild food outdoors that I celebrate to inspire my kitchen, making "honey from a weed." Sam's quote is timely, given what our world is now experiencing, infirming our collective healths and spirits. James Baldwin also said go tell it on the mountain if you want the desert to rose! Never mind that I cooked a beautiful meal this morning using wild vegetables and herbs roasted over a buttery grits, with basted fried egg; never mind a hot coconut haupia creme anglaise with baby strawberries for dessert. It is a natural self-expression made with food and nature. Never mind that my grandfather was a bank CEO; to me he was a humble gourmand and a consummate gardener. Never mind that my mother's being in heaven and gone for more than twenty years now; to me she was the ultimate home chef of love food and comfort I remember everyday. They are my lineage as my hand picks a fruit from the earth and brings it home... 

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