A Literary Feast

Posts from the “Uncategorized” Category

In Praise of Garnish

Posted on July 20th, 2012

Eat More Kale, cry bumper stickers nationwide. Well, perhaps not nationwide. I can think of pockets of the continent’s interior where kale is all but excluded from the hot food bars that dribble and seethe with whatever chemical agent turns macaroni orange. The kale lobby in these regions is weak at best. Still, the vegetable appears from time to time as a leathery green, reasonably oil-resistant pad on which such delicacies as cocktail shrimp and dip bowls are arranged to draw out fleeting Ooos and Ahhs before they are mercilessly devoured. Which leaves our friend kale lonely at best, smeared with a few bits of this and that. And you probably wish you hadn’t eaten quite so much of This and That, don’t you,…

Stank

Posted on July 20th, 2012

Sure, you can source your ingredients, prep everything, follow your own recipe or someone else’s, recognize when it’s all just so and serve it up to friends and family, but can you eat it? Probably, if you’re an amateur like me. That end product, the meal, is what it’s all about, right? But there is a point where that’s no longer true. For some it happens in a suburban home on Thanksgiving with a 26-pound turkey, a red wine spattered apron and a legion of in-laws close at hand. For others, the transformation occurs in a commercial kitchen on the bad side of someone’s threshold for cursing, bumping elbows and burning oneself in a haze of smoke and other people’s B.O. I’ve known cooks…

Thai Me Up, Thai Me Down

Posted on July 19th, 2012

1. hot august it’s all arm, cherries pits spitting humid, spitting whole afternoons you say larb and I say yes and the sheets will barely be remembered– who lets a college kid house-sit anyway? It’s all pits, hot mouths lost phone numbers. 2. cold mid-winter prospect heights he says hey I say hello, the warm startle of breath on breath, and later butter, but squid curry first our faces vague with heat in an anywhere restaurant, until the hallway bathroom, shared and I say oh so this is Brooklyn.

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…