Reminiscing Recipes

New York, NY.

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Indigenous Rice Terraces (Wine) Cultivation, Ifugao, Philippines. Last day photo during my summer long fieldwork and stay there, conducting my grad school research paper on traditional knowledge and ancestral forest and water systems conservation, 2011.

"I loved this country and I felt at home and where a man feels at home, outside of where he's born, is where he's meant to go. It is easier to keep well in a good country by taking simple [measures] than to pretend that a country which is finished is still good. A continent ages quickly once we come. The natives live in harmony with it. But we destroy, cut down the trees, drain the water, so that the water supply is altered and in a short time the soil, once the sod is turned under, is cropped out and, next, it starts to blow away as it has blown away in every old country. The earth gets tired of being exploited. A country wears out quickly unless man puts back in it all his residue and that of all his beasts. When he quits using his beasts and uses machines, earth defeats him quickly. The machine can't reproduce, nor does it fertilize the soil, and it eats what he cannot raise. A country was made to be as we found it. We are the intruders and after we are dead we may have ruined it but it will still be there and we don't know what the next changes are. I would come back here but not to make a living from it. I could do that with two pencils and a few hundred sheets of the cheapest paper. But I would come back to where it pleased me to live; to really live. Not just let my life pass. I would go, now, somewhere else and as we had always gone. You could always come back. I knew a good country when I saw one. Here there was game, plenty of birds, and I liked the natives. Here I could fish [and cook]. That, and writing, and reading, and seeing pictures was all I cared about doing. And I could remember all the pictures. Other things I liked to watch, but they were what I liked to do."

~Ernest Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa

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Back on the farm is my neighbor's vineyard and goats (rams, sorry), running. You do not see his vegetable garden and my land's fruits. Just my backyard, this view video. Abandoning my home for so long, you do not see the micro-jungle grown all around. I want you to see the wine country, where the farm is.

My food will someday be here, when I come home: "The energy of the gesture of its making" (invoking Robert Hass' stricture: to enable poem to embody). I cook to live - in the sense, nature grows its own forest and food and interrelationships, and bio-memories...

South and north of my house lies springtime water,

And only flocks of gulls come every day.

The flower path's unswept: no guests. The gate

Is open: you're the first to come this way.

The market's far: my food is nothing special.

The wine, because we're poor, is an old brew -

But if you wish I'll call my ancient neighbor

Across the fence to drink it with us two.

            
                                                                                                  ~ Du Fu, The Visitor         T'ang Dynasty, (712-770 AD)                             
                                                      

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"THE LOVE SHAK-(shuka)

....is a little old recipe" we can easily prepare in the summer. Here are the ingredients:

• Tomatoes, cut in large coins
• Jasmine rice (cooked, leftover's fine)
• Crème Fraîche
• Hot Tea water (black tea with orange peel infusion, preferred)
• Spices: turmeric ginger powder, herb de Provence, garlic salt, red pepper flakes and whole nutmeg (to grate over later)
• Ewephoria Goada cheese (or any hard cheese that pastas love together with)
• Cucumbers, peeled and sliced into coins (for the side salad)
• Crema Bianca di Tondo vinegar (white version of Balsamic, but creamed; Agata & Valentina should have it)

How to: Preheat oven to 425. Oil and butter cast iron at medium-high heat and gently place tomatoes around pan to fill entire and sear one side. Sprinkle all the spices, except nutmeg, over tomatoes, evenly, then salt and pepper them. Spread rice over, flatten nicely (doing this while tomatoes are frying in their juices and smoking out the aromatics to coat the rice) - then carefully pour in pan about a cup.5 of tea (the pan will sizzle - the acidity of the tomatoes will absorb and burn to sweetness) - 30 seconds later, turn off heat, dollop over the crème fraîche at the center of the dish, grating over some lovely nutmeg, some salt and pepper, maybe a little more pepper flakes, a little olive oil as you like, and finally the grated cheese, copious amount, please; then throw in the oven until middle is browning and crisping (see picture). Done. (The salad is pretty straight forward: shake them all up with salt, pepper, olive oil, white balsamic creme; done. Don't forget to toast a baguette. Plate over shakshuka as much to make you happy.) 

It's a love dish. Even if you're alone! 

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Sweet Red Tea Lemonade

I have never heard
that even when the gods held sway
in ancient days
ever was water bound with red
such as here in Tatta's stream..

    ~ Hokusai, The Poem of Ariwara no Narihira



Inspired by a letter a friend had written yesterday, I went to the Morgan Library to sketch Hokusai's painting of the Amida Waterfall (ca. 1832) I've never seen before. (In that scene were friends having a picnic on a promontory overlooking the great cosmic Amida.) It could be I'm recreating that food scene with my picture here, to realize both the poem and the sharing of friendship of past natures by this great painter. Appropriately, I have the cold tea ready infused in ginger and tie guan yin leaves, with raw amber honey; and for the "cherry" on top, a fragrant pomegranate tea bag steeping through in the bottle and creating a two-toned juice "meeting of waters." Of mind. Of sounds fall. I laid out petit mochi cakes, cashew marzipans and crispy jacobina squares for us. And together, quoting another ancient poet I love, Li Po, "made the most of [cool summer]" in this real painting.

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