A Literary Feast

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Mirella’s Kitchen

Posted on June 25th, 2012

My heart was racing a little bit as I tied the apron strings around my waist and prepared to join Mirella in the kitchen at Osteria del Trivio. I couldn’t remember any of the carefully rehearsed Italian “kitchen” phrases I’d been repeating for the past several days and my hands felt all thumbs. Could I do this without making a fool of myself? What did I really know about cooking in a restaurant kitchen anyway? And, in Italy! My confession, spoken to Mirella three nights earlier, that I had dreamed about cooking with her in her kitchen suddenly seemed absurd. But her immediate response, “Si, e possibilie!” gave me the courage to follow through on the hastily arranged plans. I swallowed and walked through…

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Nothing But Some Beans And Rice

Posted on June 25th, 2012

I once made the perfect bowl of rice and beans. Big deal, right? Well, it kind of is, mostly because I’ve never made it again since. I’ve been squarely within the rice and beans income bracket for a long, long time. In college I’d try to smear my summer earnings across the year, a thin sheen of solvency that usually lost its luster by the first round of midterms. And since graduation my general aversion to anything even approaching a living wage combined with the lingering after- effects of the liberal arts/vegetarian educational complex has kept things tight and legume-oriented. So I’ve made and eaten a lot of beans and rice. Figure at least once per week for the past 14 years, for a…

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A Tongan Feast

Posted on June 25th, 2012

Ano Beach, Tonga, an August night after the millennium. Our sailboat is anchored next to one belonging to a sailor who laughs out loud to himself and sings at the stars. I feel similarly wild and happy, barefooted and naked under my dress, the salt breeze tangling my hair as the dinghy rides over the waves. Every slap of the boat against the ocean bottoms my stomach out again and again, an ache that borders on hunger for this night to never end. On the beach under the palms: a Tongan feast. We slip our feet into the shallows, pull the boat up under the trees. Here is a sailor from San Diego with his German crew and a Norwegian family of four, halfway…

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Cult Classics

Posted on June 25th, 2012

I sipped my banana milk and stared up at the mural on the wall. Underneath a heading reading, “Is this progress?” was a painted chart showing the incremental evolution of ape to human, ending with a soldier armed with an AK-47. A monkey (bearing a striking resemblance to Alfred E. Neuman) looked on, extending his arms in animated gesture. Above him a speech bubble read, “Don’t blame me!” I elbowed Mr. Max and pointed to it. “Pretty funny.” It was eight days into our vacation and we had finally built up the courage to have breakfast at the Yellow Deli. Locals had told us that the Deli (which is really more of a cafe) was owned, operated, and staffed by members of the Twelve…

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The Spectrum

Posted on June 25th, 2012

All gustatory experiences are not equal: they range from bad to okay to banal to good to great to pass-me-a-proverbial-cigarette beatific. We all know bad and okay – most often these are actually the result of a well-intentioned and inexperienced cook trying to do something nice. New spouses, small children, and supportive relatives of a newly declared vegan or gluten-free eater often accidentally create something that has to be choked down with a smile and hopefully a stiff drink. Banal gustatory experiences are myriad in our world of processed food. Cereal and milk always tastes like cereal and milk, frozen pizza always tastes like frozen pizza, and peanut butter and jelly always tastes like elementary school. These are fine things–their actualities always line up…

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Arlene Brokaw: Inspired Farming

Posted on June 25th, 2012

More important than striving for perfection is to “keep your cool, be confident in what you do know to solve problems down the road… It sounds like good advice, but I still freak out.” Arlene Brokaw, head cheesemaker at Olde Oak Farm, has a wisdom acquired only with experience and many mistakes. As we waited in the cheesemaking facility for the starter culture to work its acidifying magic on the milk, Arlene explained to me that during her first few years on the farm, she could not focus on the cheese, on the greater result. She had been too afraid of messing up. This is Arlene’s fourth season up in Maxfield, Maine, 45 minutes north of Bangor, and while she is still learning about…

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Onion

Posted on June 25th, 2012

Tonight I cooked an onion. I do this almost every single night, but it’s still worth writing about because I love to do it–the whole process. I love choosing a big, round, firm onion–my onion–from the crate at Publix. The other onions in that crate have other destinies in other skillets, but I don’t envy them because I can’t imagine produce receiving a higher degree of loving attention anywhere else than in my kitchen. I love turning the front-right burner on to medium heat as I execute my patented “no-look” twisting refrigerator-door opening maneuver. This move is only possible in a cramped condominium kitchen, and only once you are intimately familiar with your surroundings. I don’t recommend it for beginners or away games. As…

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For the Love of the Dark Virgin (Chocolate)

Posted on June 25th, 2012

I am hiking up northeast Brooklyn streets, pretty brownstone blocks giving way to commercial drabness of Myrtle Avenue, the highway past that, industrial buildings looming on the other side. My face is covered with a film of oily moisture, my jeans are sticking to my legs, my messenger bag pulling on my left shoulder and I swear it’s sweating worse than the right one. I did not dress for an urban hike on an unexpectedly steamy, humid late spring day. In my head, imagination runs wild. I am about to meet Ryan Cheney, the co-founder of Raaka Virgin Chocolate. Ryan is the sort of entrepreneur we all love to read and talk about: found a passion, wanted to make a difference too, and successfully…

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The Dregs

Posted on June 25th, 2012

The boy who gave us bananas carried a machete casually slung over his shoulder. He seemed confused when I broke one open and began to eat it, and talked very fast in Swahili to my guide. It seems I had made yet another cultural gaffe. These were cooking bananas, my guide explained; no one in their right mind would eat one raw. The boy, shooting me looks that clearly said he was worried about this tall white girl, nimbly climbed a nearby tree and brought me down a petite, deep golden, and oddly heavy replacement. Its peel was thin and fibrous and the three bites that it afforded me were rich and sweet. The boy took the first banana – a fruit that might…

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In the Jaws

Posted on June 25th, 2012

“I will pee off the side of this boat if I have to. I’ve done it before.”   I thought this even while I thought about the multiple layers of pants and rubber and rain-soaked nylon that I was currently sporting. I’d make it work. I had one mark against me already by being dickless, so, I’d just have to metaphorically sack up and make the micturition happen, one way or another.   I was perched on the prow bench seat of a flat-bottomed fishing boat, somewhere off of the coast of Tillamook, OR. When your friend asks you if you want to go fishing with a wild-eyed, Columbia-educated strawberry farmer who tends bar at the sushi joint they both work at, and tells…

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