Addiction. bookstores.
I try to go to the bookstore every week. Often I come home with at least one or two new books (my car is full of carrier bags and receipts), but mostly, I admit, I go there to read trashy celebrity magazines, curled up in a big, comfy armchair with a pile of magazines and a hot chocolate (winter) or iced tea (summer). Trying not to laugh at other people's conversations, trying not to catch their eye as they discuss intimate details of their life that I'd rather not hear. (When people are having a long conversation in a language they don't think you understand, what do you do? Pretend that you don't speak whatever language it is? Correct their grammar or provide a vocabulary word they don't know?).
I prowl up and down the aisles, looking for books I've always meant to read but never got around to, or just look for something to catch my eye, stop me in my tracks. I started doing this at the library when I was in high school, wandering slowly from the A's all the way through the Z's. In four years I read almost all the fiction they had. It was how I discovered new things, writers whose words I would slowly fall into, fall in love with. Now I buy books instead of borrowing them, which is financially ruinous, but as far as addictions go more beneficial than harmful. Usually I'm there for hours. Once I somehow spent five hours at the bookstore. When I left, the parking-lot attendant looked at me quizzically. I got here before you did, I said. I don't have a ticket. His eyebrow goes up. You were here for five hours? What were you doing? Buying books, I said. He laughed and waved me through. Now he says hello when I arrive, turning to greet me when he hears my music blasting through the open window.
My favorite bookstore in the world is Eslite, in Taipei. The original one. I spend hours there whenever I'm in town. There are always people sitting on steps, in aisles, leaning against shelves, blocking your path as you reach for a book, browsing, reading for hours. It is big but not huge, with a fantastically edited selection of English-language books. Nearly all of my favorite books were discovered there. Literature is not divided by fiction/non-fiction, but by nationality - American/British writers in one section, European writers organized by country. I found Calvino there, Kundera. I fell into essays that I would have otherwise passed by. Eco, whose fiction confused me, I discovered wrote so beautifully and clearly about literature and life I could only fall hopelessly in love.
I love libraries, but bookstores are different. On the one hand, libraries are free, and in a bookstore you have to, you know, actually buy the books. But on the other hand, you've bought it, it's yours. I have the insatiable need to own books. When I find I writer I love, I have to acquire everything he or she has written. Which is why books have taken over nearly every surface of my bedroom, my bathroom, and have made serious enroachments upon the kitchen. Some of them are brand-new, never read, just waiting for the right time for me to crack them open and dive in. Others are old, well-loved, falling apart, worn spots on the covers from being squashed in suitcases or at the bottom of a backpack. Sometimes I buy used books, with other people's names and notes, drawings inside. One even has an inscription and a little sketch, from 1937. But now they are mine.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Thinking. Mandelstam.
It started so innocently. A brief epigraph in Burgess' Honey for Bears. But I have been thinking of those two lines from Mandelstam's poem all day. We shall meet again in Petersburg/As though there we had buried the sun. I have been haunted by those words since I read them. It has been seven years since I last saw Petersburg. It was June, at the height of the White Nights, when the sun never goes down, never buries itself below the horizon, when night never falls like a black curtain. At midnight light still lingered in the sky, bright enough to read without turning on a lamp. I look back at the month I spent there and I wonder if it was all a dream. The endless day gave the city an even more surreal quality, with its candy-colored palaces like elaborate wedding-cakes fringed with white frosting, endless boulevards, avenues of trees, interlocking canals criss-crossed with bridges, the scent of lilacs and lilies-of-the-valley wafting down the escalators into the subterranean metro stations. It felt unreal, a stage set against which modern Russia simulateously merges and clashes with the past. Long-legged girls in short skirts getting in and out of a never-ending stream of Mercedes-Benzes idling at the curb. Apartment buildings like blocks of concrete raised above the silt of the city. (St. Petersburg isn't a city, it's a swamp). It was born as St. Petersburg, then became Leningrad, and now it is St. Petersburg again. The endless length of Nevsky Prospekt like the spine of the city. They say of Nevsky Prospekt (as they do of any major street of any city, I suppose) that if you stand there long enough, you will meet everyone you know. Who might I meet again in Petersburg, after a lifetime of a few years has passed? The myself I found there in 1999 was not the one I was six years before. Who knows how I might find myself there now?
It started so innocently. A brief epigraph in Burgess' Honey for Bears. But I have been thinking of those two lines from Mandelstam's poem all day. We shall meet again in Petersburg/As though there we had buried the sun. I have been haunted by those words since I read them. It has been seven years since I last saw Petersburg. It was June, at the height of the White Nights, when the sun never goes down, never buries itself below the horizon, when night never falls like a black curtain. At midnight light still lingered in the sky, bright enough to read without turning on a lamp. I look back at the month I spent there and I wonder if it was all a dream. The endless day gave the city an even more surreal quality, with its candy-colored palaces like elaborate wedding-cakes fringed with white frosting, endless boulevards, avenues of trees, interlocking canals criss-crossed with bridges, the scent of lilacs and lilies-of-the-valley wafting down the escalators into the subterranean metro stations. It felt unreal, a stage set against which modern Russia simulateously merges and clashes with the past. Long-legged girls in short skirts getting in and out of a never-ending stream of Mercedes-Benzes idling at the curb. Apartment buildings like blocks of concrete raised above the silt of the city. (St. Petersburg isn't a city, it's a swamp). It was born as St. Petersburg, then became Leningrad, and now it is St. Petersburg again. The endless length of Nevsky Prospekt like the spine of the city. They say of Nevsky Prospekt (as they do of any major street of any city, I suppose) that if you stand there long enough, you will meet everyone you know. Who might I meet again in Petersburg, after a lifetime of a few years has passed? The myself I found there in 1999 was not the one I was six years before. Who knows how I might find myself there now?
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Reading. Burgess.
I must confess that I have never read A Clockwork Orange, not all the way through. I started reading it, more than once, but I never got very far. The language confused me, even after I learned Russian. Which helped. But the dizzying whirl of Burgess' words left me disoriented, confused. I put the book away.
I was looking for something else when I came across Honey for Bears. Flipping through the pages I first saw the epigraph. It comes from a poem by Osip Mandelstam, the first two lines, first in Russian, and then the translation: We shall meet again in Petersburg, as though there we had buried the sun. I felt a shiver up my spine. I had been reading Mandelstam just the other day; here he was calling to me again. Bought the book, thought about it on the ride home (it was a long drive for someone with nothing to think about...), opened it, slid into the words...The words fly by, send me reeling. I am falling into a different world again. I will have to take this one slowly, think about what Burgess meant by referencing We shall meet again in Petersburg...that whisper across the decades.
I must confess that I have never read A Clockwork Orange, not all the way through. I started reading it, more than once, but I never got very far. The language confused me, even after I learned Russian. Which helped. But the dizzying whirl of Burgess' words left me disoriented, confused. I put the book away.
I was looking for something else when I came across Honey for Bears. Flipping through the pages I first saw the epigraph. It comes from a poem by Osip Mandelstam, the first two lines, first in Russian, and then the translation: We shall meet again in Petersburg, as though there we had buried the sun. I felt a shiver up my spine. I had been reading Mandelstam just the other day; here he was calling to me again. Bought the book, thought about it on the ride home (it was a long drive for someone with nothing to think about...), opened it, slid into the words...The words fly by, send me reeling. I am falling into a different world again. I will have to take this one slowly, think about what Burgess meant by referencing We shall meet again in Petersburg...that whisper across the decades.
Eating/Cooking. mushrooms.
The other day, my father bought a few handfuls of morels at the farmer's market. I cooked them for dinner tonight, washed them, sliced each one in half, sauteed them in a heavy cast-iron skillet filmed with olive oil. Sprinkled them with salt, turned them out onto a plate. They were faintly chewy, oozing their own juices, their ruffly texture tickling the tongue, earthy and intensely flavored.
In theory, mushrooms are disgusting. They're fungi. They grow in dirt. They're the color of dirt. When you buy them, they come caked in...dirt. Or possibly something else that I would rather not think about. If undercooked, they can taste like styrofoam. If overcooked, they can be squishy and slimy and otherwise...unappetizing. You have to time things right. But when cooked right...they are perfection.
At one dinner at my favorite restaurant, each course contained a different mushroom. I believe I remember chanterelles, king boleti, morels, even matsutake mushrooms, and something else I can't remember. It was late August or early September, and the mushroom season was just beginning. Mushrooms make me think of autumn. Wandering through the farmer's market. Sifting through piles of golden chanterelles, looking for the most perfect ones, taking them home, brushing off the pine needles, sauteeing them briefly in a hot pan. Autumn on a plate.
It's hard to say which kind of mushroom is my favorite. They all are, I suppose. Portabellos, thick and juicy. Chanterelles, delicately perfumed. Matsutakes, with a heady fragrance that permeates everything it touches. Morels, woodsy and dark. Shiitakes, with their tough stems that have to be trimmed before cooking. Wood ears, slippery and chewy, the bane of my childhood. Porcinis, simply sliced, brushed with olive oil, broiled, and sprinkled with sea salt. In Italy I had a dish of ravioli filled with Pecorino, covered in shavings of black truffles and gratineed until the cheese was browned in spots and the truffles crunched against the tender pasta. Extraordinary, all of them. I could not live without mushrooms.
The other day, my father bought a few handfuls of morels at the farmer's market. I cooked them for dinner tonight, washed them, sliced each one in half, sauteed them in a heavy cast-iron skillet filmed with olive oil. Sprinkled them with salt, turned them out onto a plate. They were faintly chewy, oozing their own juices, their ruffly texture tickling the tongue, earthy and intensely flavored.
In theory, mushrooms are disgusting. They're fungi. They grow in dirt. They're the color of dirt. When you buy them, they come caked in...dirt. Or possibly something else that I would rather not think about. If undercooked, they can taste like styrofoam. If overcooked, they can be squishy and slimy and otherwise...unappetizing. You have to time things right. But when cooked right...they are perfection.
At one dinner at my favorite restaurant, each course contained a different mushroom. I believe I remember chanterelles, king boleti, morels, even matsutake mushrooms, and something else I can't remember. It was late August or early September, and the mushroom season was just beginning. Mushrooms make me think of autumn. Wandering through the farmer's market. Sifting through piles of golden chanterelles, looking for the most perfect ones, taking them home, brushing off the pine needles, sauteeing them briefly in a hot pan. Autumn on a plate.
It's hard to say which kind of mushroom is my favorite. They all are, I suppose. Portabellos, thick and juicy. Chanterelles, delicately perfumed. Matsutakes, with a heady fragrance that permeates everything it touches. Morels, woodsy and dark. Shiitakes, with their tough stems that have to be trimmed before cooking. Wood ears, slippery and chewy, the bane of my childhood. Porcinis, simply sliced, brushed with olive oil, broiled, and sprinkled with sea salt. In Italy I had a dish of ravioli filled with Pecorino, covered in shavings of black truffles and gratineed until the cheese was browned in spots and the truffles crunched against the tender pasta. Extraordinary, all of them. I could not live without mushrooms.
Monday, May 15, 2006
How it all began. Restaurants.
I have been eating in restaurants for as long as I can remember. My earliest memory of eating out is a plate of smoked salmon on brown bread at the Russian Tea Room in New York City when I was four or five. The salty coolness of the smoked salmon, the bright sourness of capers, the biting crunch of onion, the earthy brown taste of dark bread. We sat in a booth near the back of the room, against the wall. On another trip there I made such a mess that before the waiter served me my Creme Russe, which we always had for dessert, he unfurled another napkin across the tablecloth in front of me. The Russian Tea Room is what I remember from my childhood, when my grandfather lived in New York City and we visited him frequently. It is where memory begins.
But the meal I remember most, above all others, comes over a decade later. I was sixteen. A former student of my father's was in town, visiting from his native Sweden with his girlfriend. We went to Rover's Restaurant, a French restaurant in Seattle. The restaurant is small, in a little house tucked away in the heart of Madison Valley. The chef/owner is a charming, witty, fedora-wearing Frenchman who comes and chats with you before dinner if he has time. He always remembers my father. Everyone does. It was my first meal there, and I remember everything I ate. Everything. A white burgundy to start, a red one to follow. A bottle of Evian on the table. Crusty loaves of bread, sweet butter.
The first course was a tian of tuna sashimi, tiny, jewel-like squares of fish, molded on top of a layer of cucumber, precisely cut into cubes, pale green flesh against jade skin. The dish was cool and sweet and tasted faintly of sesame oil. It was a sign of good things to come, delicate, simple, refined. I am a little confused about the order of the next two dishes, but one of them was a perfectly seared scallop, just caramelized around the edges, smooth and tender, on a bed of fava beans cooked with little shreds of foie gras. Fava beans and liver. I felt like Hannibal Lecter, but it was excellent. Then came a piece of sea bass, cooked so gently it softly fell apart on the tongue, in a lobster nage. A creamy, lobster-infused sauce that I practically wanted to bathe in. Then came the palate cleanser, wine flavored with herbs, fennel, I think. Refreshing and slightly dizzying all at once. At last came the main course, duck breast roasted and sliced, a wine-reduction sauce, smooth and intense, a puree of potatoes. The chef had come out to talk with us a little before the meal began, and my father mentioned how much he liked foie gras. So another little dish came out, perfectly seared foie gras, a slightly crackling crust that gave away to the melting interior. I was in heaven. And then came dessert. Mine was a passionfruit bavarian, creamy and not too sweet, fragrant and tart, floating in a pool of vanilla-scented sauce. I had never eaten a meal like this before, course after course, and it was a revelation. It was incredible. We were there for over four hours. In time I would eat many such meals, in different restaurants all over the world. A year later I would pace myself through ten courses at Lespinasse in New York. But this was the first.
I have eaten many meals at Rover's in the past ten years now. Every one has been excellent, sometimes extraordinary. When I eat there I know everything will be perfect. Sometimes we are lucky and the chef creates something different, just for us. (One time, I gave him a challenge. We will eat any part of any animal you can imagine, I told him. The results were mind-blowing. I will tell that story another time). But the first meal stands out the most clearly in my mind. I think it was the first time that I realized food could be like this. And I had never had so many courses. It was a night that I'll never forget.
I have been eating in restaurants for as long as I can remember. My earliest memory of eating out is a plate of smoked salmon on brown bread at the Russian Tea Room in New York City when I was four or five. The salty coolness of the smoked salmon, the bright sourness of capers, the biting crunch of onion, the earthy brown taste of dark bread. We sat in a booth near the back of the room, against the wall. On another trip there I made such a mess that before the waiter served me my Creme Russe, which we always had for dessert, he unfurled another napkin across the tablecloth in front of me. The Russian Tea Room is what I remember from my childhood, when my grandfather lived in New York City and we visited him frequently. It is where memory begins.
But the meal I remember most, above all others, comes over a decade later. I was sixteen. A former student of my father's was in town, visiting from his native Sweden with his girlfriend. We went to Rover's Restaurant, a French restaurant in Seattle. The restaurant is small, in a little house tucked away in the heart of Madison Valley. The chef/owner is a charming, witty, fedora-wearing Frenchman who comes and chats with you before dinner if he has time. He always remembers my father. Everyone does. It was my first meal there, and I remember everything I ate. Everything. A white burgundy to start, a red one to follow. A bottle of Evian on the table. Crusty loaves of bread, sweet butter.
The first course was a tian of tuna sashimi, tiny, jewel-like squares of fish, molded on top of a layer of cucumber, precisely cut into cubes, pale green flesh against jade skin. The dish was cool and sweet and tasted faintly of sesame oil. It was a sign of good things to come, delicate, simple, refined. I am a little confused about the order of the next two dishes, but one of them was a perfectly seared scallop, just caramelized around the edges, smooth and tender, on a bed of fava beans cooked with little shreds of foie gras. Fava beans and liver. I felt like Hannibal Lecter, but it was excellent. Then came a piece of sea bass, cooked so gently it softly fell apart on the tongue, in a lobster nage. A creamy, lobster-infused sauce that I practically wanted to bathe in. Then came the palate cleanser, wine flavored with herbs, fennel, I think. Refreshing and slightly dizzying all at once. At last came the main course, duck breast roasted and sliced, a wine-reduction sauce, smooth and intense, a puree of potatoes. The chef had come out to talk with us a little before the meal began, and my father mentioned how much he liked foie gras. So another little dish came out, perfectly seared foie gras, a slightly crackling crust that gave away to the melting interior. I was in heaven. And then came dessert. Mine was a passionfruit bavarian, creamy and not too sweet, fragrant and tart, floating in a pool of vanilla-scented sauce. I had never eaten a meal like this before, course after course, and it was a revelation. It was incredible. We were there for over four hours. In time I would eat many such meals, in different restaurants all over the world. A year later I would pace myself through ten courses at Lespinasse in New York. But this was the first.
I have eaten many meals at Rover's in the past ten years now. Every one has been excellent, sometimes extraordinary. When I eat there I know everything will be perfect. Sometimes we are lucky and the chef creates something different, just for us. (One time, I gave him a challenge. We will eat any part of any animal you can imagine, I told him. The results were mind-blowing. I will tell that story another time). But the first meal stands out the most clearly in my mind. I think it was the first time that I realized food could be like this. And I had never had so many courses. It was a night that I'll never forget.
Intersections. (reading).
I have always loved how one writer will send me sliding towards another one. A mention, a reference, sending me in search of something new. An epigraph pushing me in a circle back to whence I came. My eye slid down the bookcase of poems, from Bukowski on the top shelf to Ferlinghetti a shelf or two below. A single title squished in between two larger books. A Coney Island of the Mind. The title caught my attention, held it, set off the avalanche that becomes love. Then I noticed the author's note inside. The title comes from Henry Miller's Into the Night Life. Henry Miller who I had first read after reading Anais Nin, almost a decade ago in another country. Who I now returned to, rediscovered essays, something new to capture my mind. The non-fiction slid more easily into my mind, into my heart, than the fiction, which I have always found difficult.
A few weeks ago I had discovered (thanks to a friend, whom I will have to love forever because of this) the poetry of Ilya Kaminsky. His Musica Humana brought me back to Osip Mandelstam, whose poetry I had read years before, in another time. I had read the memoir written by his widow, Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope, one of the shattering, heartbreaking legacies left behind by the widows of Soviet writers. I read many of them at that time. There were so many. So I came back to Mandelstam. And then today, during my weekly bookstore raid, my eye slid down from Bukowski (I always look to see what they have that I don't, which is a lot. Prolific old bastard), and was caught by Burgess. Who I have never quite finished reading. I found a book, opened it. The epigraph came from Mandelstam. A sign? Perhaps. Another intersection.
I have always loved how one writer will send me sliding towards another one. A mention, a reference, sending me in search of something new. An epigraph pushing me in a circle back to whence I came. My eye slid down the bookcase of poems, from Bukowski on the top shelf to Ferlinghetti a shelf or two below. A single title squished in between two larger books. A Coney Island of the Mind. The title caught my attention, held it, set off the avalanche that becomes love. Then I noticed the author's note inside. The title comes from Henry Miller's Into the Night Life. Henry Miller who I had first read after reading Anais Nin, almost a decade ago in another country. Who I now returned to, rediscovered essays, something new to capture my mind. The non-fiction slid more easily into my mind, into my heart, than the fiction, which I have always found difficult.
A few weeks ago I had discovered (thanks to a friend, whom I will have to love forever because of this) the poetry of Ilya Kaminsky. His Musica Humana brought me back to Osip Mandelstam, whose poetry I had read years before, in another time. I had read the memoir written by his widow, Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope, one of the shattering, heartbreaking legacies left behind by the widows of Soviet writers. I read many of them at that time. There were so many. So I came back to Mandelstam. And then today, during my weekly bookstore raid, my eye slid down from Bukowski (I always look to see what they have that I don't, which is a lot. Prolific old bastard), and was caught by Burgess. Who I have never quite finished reading. I found a book, opened it. The epigraph came from Mandelstam. A sign? Perhaps. Another intersection.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Reading. Burroughs.
Strangely, I've never read Naked Lunch. Somehow I'd always skipped by it, my eye slipping past to other writers on the bookshelf. I suppose some day I'll get to it. But not just yet. I started with something else.
I came across Junky late one night during my weekly bookstore prowl. I think the original title was Junk, but then it was published under another title (and a pseudonym). Personally I prefer the original Junk, and my copy (the 50th anniversary edition) makes an interesting choice for the cover - the letters J U N across the top, and then the K underneath the N, followed by the author's name in small letters, and then the final Y at the bottom. At first glance it seems to say JUNK, in keeping with the writer's original title while technically retaining the title imposed by the publisher. I have to admit it was the cover that caught my eye, the foolishly, quirkily, cartoonish drawing of a needle, the face of the writer/addict, the title in big letters.
Growing up in America in the late 80's and early 90's we were educated from third grade onwards that DRUGS! ARE! BAD! In sixth grade I found Go Ask Alice in the library and was permanently put off drugs for life. (Later I found that the book was a fake, not actually the real-life journal of a teenage runaway, and I was so mad. Think of all the drugs I could have taken, the wildly promiscuous anonymous, unprotected sex I could have had. Or not). I have been around people who drank, who smoked, who did drugs (not in front of me). None of it ever interested me. Literature was my drug, my wine, my addiction. Words were enough to intoxicate me, make me high, make me feel things in a way I can't begin to explain. But maybe I think this only because I've never done drugs.
If Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych gives you an understanding of what it means to die, then Junk gives you an understanding of what it means to be an addict. How innocently it all begins. Once, twice, a few times a day. But you're not an addict. Then suddenly you can't live without the junk, you are always searching for the next fix, making contacts with dealers, becoming a dealer, doing whatever you have to do to score another gram. It was a bright sunny day today when I read this book, and it made the air around me go cold and gray. Burroughs makes you see what his life was like, what it was like to be addicted to heroin at that time. It is a novel, but a novel so autobiographical that when you read it you feel that surreal blurring feeling, when fiction and reality merge into one indistiguishable whole. His writing is so clear and unflinching and bare that when I put the book down I feel like his words are my drug and I am in withdrawal.
Strangely, I've never read Naked Lunch. Somehow I'd always skipped by it, my eye slipping past to other writers on the bookshelf. I suppose some day I'll get to it. But not just yet. I started with something else.
I came across Junky late one night during my weekly bookstore prowl. I think the original title was Junk, but then it was published under another title (and a pseudonym). Personally I prefer the original Junk, and my copy (the 50th anniversary edition) makes an interesting choice for the cover - the letters J U N across the top, and then the K underneath the N, followed by the author's name in small letters, and then the final Y at the bottom. At first glance it seems to say JUNK, in keeping with the writer's original title while technically retaining the title imposed by the publisher. I have to admit it was the cover that caught my eye, the foolishly, quirkily, cartoonish drawing of a needle, the face of the writer/addict, the title in big letters.
Growing up in America in the late 80's and early 90's we were educated from third grade onwards that DRUGS! ARE! BAD! In sixth grade I found Go Ask Alice in the library and was permanently put off drugs for life. (Later I found that the book was a fake, not actually the real-life journal of a teenage runaway, and I was so mad. Think of all the drugs I could have taken, the wildly promiscuous anonymous, unprotected sex I could have had. Or not). I have been around people who drank, who smoked, who did drugs (not in front of me). None of it ever interested me. Literature was my drug, my wine, my addiction. Words were enough to intoxicate me, make me high, make me feel things in a way I can't begin to explain. But maybe I think this only because I've never done drugs.
If Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych gives you an understanding of what it means to die, then Junk gives you an understanding of what it means to be an addict. How innocently it all begins. Once, twice, a few times a day. But you're not an addict. Then suddenly you can't live without the junk, you are always searching for the next fix, making contacts with dealers, becoming a dealer, doing whatever you have to do to score another gram. It was a bright sunny day today when I read this book, and it made the air around me go cold and gray. Burroughs makes you see what his life was like, what it was like to be addicted to heroin at that time. It is a novel, but a novel so autobiographical that when you read it you feel that surreal blurring feeling, when fiction and reality merge into one indistiguishable whole. His writing is so clear and unflinching and bare that when I put the book down I feel like his words are my drug and I am in withdrawal.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
The Wandering Gourmand. Spain.
As I mentioned earlier, I spent two weeks this winter driving around Portugal and Spain with three members of my family. In a minivan. It was one of the craziest trips I have ever taken in my entire life. We ate (and drove) our way up Portugal, heading north from Lisbon, with many culinary and scenic detours along the way. On the fifth day, we arrived in Spain, staying at a Parador in Baiona. We would stay at a different Parador for each of the six nights we spent in Spain. Similar to the Pousadas in Portugal, the Paradores are a chain of government-run hotels, housed in former castles, fortresses, monasteries, medieval houses, and in one memorable place, a 15th-century Royal Hospital that served the pilgrims who came to worship at Santiago de Compostela. I think there is even a Parador on the grounds of the Alhambra (it is the most expensive of them all). They range from three to five stars, and like the Pousadas serve excellent regional cuisine in their restaurants. However, a slight miscommunication at dinner (that first night in Baiona) led to my being served a salad with a cold terrine of octopus (most excellent, very simple), and then, a dish of octopus cooked with potatoes (which I had most definitely NOT ordered). The octopus was chewy, the potatoes mushy, the entire dish completely without flavor. There was no way I could eat that much octopus, and after struggling vainly with a few (maybe several) mouthfuls, I gave up. I don't think I have been able to eat octopus since.
As with the time spent in Portugal, there is no one meal that stands out clearly in my mind from our journey through Spain. We ate a lot of jamón, because a certain member of our party who shall remain nameless insisted on ordering it at nearly every meal. It was addictive, those dark-pink slices of ham rimmed with a sliver of white fat, salty and intense, with a faint sweetness, sliced a little thicker than prosciutto is in Italy. One night we couldn't face an actual dinner, so we ordered bread and two different kinds of ham, some other sausages, and other little things I can't remember in the hotel's tapas bar. After a week of traveling and eating endless meals my soul cries out for the simplest sandwich, a few slices of ham and/or sausage, some crusty bread. A glass of wine, maybe a piece of cake afterwards.
The most excruciating thing about traveling in Spain is that people don't eat dinner until late, perhaps around 10 pm. Restaurants don't even open until 9, maybe 8:30 at the earliest. We were further discombobulated by the fact that Spain is an hour ahead of Portugal, which none of us realized until the second or third night. (Whoops). We found a workable routine - eating a leisurely (and extravagant) breakfast around 8 or 9 (always featuring plenty of cafe con leche, and, of course, plates of jamón), and then lunch at 1, followed by a light dinner at the tapas bar around 7 (often involving a few more plates of jamón and other small dishes, although one night involved some fantastically juicy fried frog's legs). A few nights did end with dinner at 8:30, with our party being the first to arrive in the empty dining room. My notes describe a roasted shoulder of lamb, with crispily fried potatoes one night, and a intensely beefy tenderloin sprinkled with sea salt that crunched between my teeth the next night.
I have mentioned before a long-standing obsession with crêpes in their simplest form, plainly drizzled with lemon juice and powdered sugar. But in Santiago de Compostela (at the basement restaurant of the Parador Hostal dos Reis Católicos) I had the most exquisite dessert, my favorite of the entire trip. Crêpes were layered with applesauce and pastry cream, each layer of filling barely thicker than the crêpe, the top layer sprinkled with sugar and caramelized. The caramel topping cracked beneath my fork, everything hot and sweet and tender with the contrast of burnt sugar crunching against the flavors of apple and cream. It was absolute heaven.
As I mentioned earlier, I spent two weeks this winter driving around Portugal and Spain with three members of my family. In a minivan. It was one of the craziest trips I have ever taken in my entire life. We ate (and drove) our way up Portugal, heading north from Lisbon, with many culinary and scenic detours along the way. On the fifth day, we arrived in Spain, staying at a Parador in Baiona. We would stay at a different Parador for each of the six nights we spent in Spain. Similar to the Pousadas in Portugal, the Paradores are a chain of government-run hotels, housed in former castles, fortresses, monasteries, medieval houses, and in one memorable place, a 15th-century Royal Hospital that served the pilgrims who came to worship at Santiago de Compostela. I think there is even a Parador on the grounds of the Alhambra (it is the most expensive of them all). They range from three to five stars, and like the Pousadas serve excellent regional cuisine in their restaurants. However, a slight miscommunication at dinner (that first night in Baiona) led to my being served a salad with a cold terrine of octopus (most excellent, very simple), and then, a dish of octopus cooked with potatoes (which I had most definitely NOT ordered). The octopus was chewy, the potatoes mushy, the entire dish completely without flavor. There was no way I could eat that much octopus, and after struggling vainly with a few (maybe several) mouthfuls, I gave up. I don't think I have been able to eat octopus since.
As with the time spent in Portugal, there is no one meal that stands out clearly in my mind from our journey through Spain. We ate a lot of jamón, because a certain member of our party who shall remain nameless insisted on ordering it at nearly every meal. It was addictive, those dark-pink slices of ham rimmed with a sliver of white fat, salty and intense, with a faint sweetness, sliced a little thicker than prosciutto is in Italy. One night we couldn't face an actual dinner, so we ordered bread and two different kinds of ham, some other sausages, and other little things I can't remember in the hotel's tapas bar. After a week of traveling and eating endless meals my soul cries out for the simplest sandwich, a few slices of ham and/or sausage, some crusty bread. A glass of wine, maybe a piece of cake afterwards.
The most excruciating thing about traveling in Spain is that people don't eat dinner until late, perhaps around 10 pm. Restaurants don't even open until 9, maybe 8:30 at the earliest. We were further discombobulated by the fact that Spain is an hour ahead of Portugal, which none of us realized until the second or third night. (Whoops). We found a workable routine - eating a leisurely (and extravagant) breakfast around 8 or 9 (always featuring plenty of cafe con leche, and, of course, plates of jamón), and then lunch at 1, followed by a light dinner at the tapas bar around 7 (often involving a few more plates of jamón and other small dishes, although one night involved some fantastically juicy fried frog's legs). A few nights did end with dinner at 8:30, with our party being the first to arrive in the empty dining room. My notes describe a roasted shoulder of lamb, with crispily fried potatoes one night, and a intensely beefy tenderloin sprinkled with sea salt that crunched between my teeth the next night.
I have mentioned before a long-standing obsession with crêpes in their simplest form, plainly drizzled with lemon juice and powdered sugar. But in Santiago de Compostela (at the basement restaurant of the Parador Hostal dos Reis Católicos) I had the most exquisite dessert, my favorite of the entire trip. Crêpes were layered with applesauce and pastry cream, each layer of filling barely thicker than the crêpe, the top layer sprinkled with sugar and caramelized. The caramel topping cracked beneath my fork, everything hot and sweet and tender with the contrast of burnt sugar crunching against the flavors of apple and cream. It was absolute heaven.
Cooking. Roast Chicken.
I think roast chicken is one of my favorite foods. I love the crispy shards of skin, the juicy tender breast meat, the deeply flavored, succulent dark meat. Coming home to the smell of roasting chicken is one of the best things I can remember. I have probably made hundreds of them in the past ten years. It started in high school. "KAIRU!!!!" came the yell from upstairs. "CAN YOU STICK THE CHICKEN IN THE OVEN FOR ME????" "HOW!? I'VE NEVER ROASTED A CHICKEN BEFORE!!!" "FIGURE IT OUT!!" First came the unwrapping, pulling the raw chicken from its plastic wrapper, rinsing it, excavating the neck and various unidentifiable organs from the body cavity, pulling off any extraneous fat. Wiping everything dry with fistfuls of paper towels, placing the chicken on a rack in the roasting pan, sprinkling it with salt and pepper. Consulting Julia Child for roasting temperatures and times. I figured it out.
Nervousness led to several slightly overdone chickens, a little on the dry side but still good. Sometimes overconfidence would lead to chicken still pink at the joints, oozing just a little blood, which meant a return trip to the oven. Various experiments and modifications followed. Salting just before roasting, brining, roasting breast-side down, breast-side up, rubbed with butter, anointed with oil, stuffed with lemons or onions or garlic or rosemary. Never trussed. I always felt like trussing the chicken was a completely pointless endeavor, a waste of time that led to symmetrical presentation at the cost of even roasting.
Last year I found a cookbook by Thomas Keller, Bouchon (after his Yountville bistro), full of simple (yet incredibly complicated) recipes from his restaurant (everything takes two days and a battalion of equipment). His brine involves salt, garlic, rosemary, honey, lemon, and parsley (which I always forget to buy), among other things. Brining the chicken for several hours left the flesh moist, juicy, tender, flavored with all the ingredients from the brine. Yet somehow I felt that the essential flavor of the chicken was lacking. Masked by the lemon, herbs, aromatics, the real taste of the chicken felt muted. And combining all those ingredients, simmering them, letting the mixture cool (preferably overnight) was tedious. I always got honey all over the place, peppercorns skittering across the counter and bouncing off to crunch beneath my feet. There had to be a better way.
Now I prepare my chicken (always free-range, sometimes organic) in the morning before I leave for work. Sprinkle it with kosher salt inside and out, place it in the roasting pan on a rack, and stick it in the fridge to rest all day. When I get home, I preheat the oven, let the chicken come to room temperature. Sometimes I put a couple of sliced onions in the pan. Add a little water, or wine, so the juices don't burn. I roast the bird breast down for half an hour at high temperature (about 425), and then breast up for another half hour so the skin browns and becomes crisp, and then turn the heat down for the remaining roasting time. The chicken is perfect.
I think roast chicken is one of my favorite foods. I love the crispy shards of skin, the juicy tender breast meat, the deeply flavored, succulent dark meat. Coming home to the smell of roasting chicken is one of the best things I can remember. I have probably made hundreds of them in the past ten years. It started in high school. "KAIRU!!!!" came the yell from upstairs. "CAN YOU STICK THE CHICKEN IN THE OVEN FOR ME????" "HOW!? I'VE NEVER ROASTED A CHICKEN BEFORE!!!" "FIGURE IT OUT!!" First came the unwrapping, pulling the raw chicken from its plastic wrapper, rinsing it, excavating the neck and various unidentifiable organs from the body cavity, pulling off any extraneous fat. Wiping everything dry with fistfuls of paper towels, placing the chicken on a rack in the roasting pan, sprinkling it with salt and pepper. Consulting Julia Child for roasting temperatures and times. I figured it out.
Nervousness led to several slightly overdone chickens, a little on the dry side but still good. Sometimes overconfidence would lead to chicken still pink at the joints, oozing just a little blood, which meant a return trip to the oven. Various experiments and modifications followed. Salting just before roasting, brining, roasting breast-side down, breast-side up, rubbed with butter, anointed with oil, stuffed with lemons or onions or garlic or rosemary. Never trussed. I always felt like trussing the chicken was a completely pointless endeavor, a waste of time that led to symmetrical presentation at the cost of even roasting.
Last year I found a cookbook by Thomas Keller, Bouchon (after his Yountville bistro), full of simple (yet incredibly complicated) recipes from his restaurant (everything takes two days and a battalion of equipment). His brine involves salt, garlic, rosemary, honey, lemon, and parsley (which I always forget to buy), among other things. Brining the chicken for several hours left the flesh moist, juicy, tender, flavored with all the ingredients from the brine. Yet somehow I felt that the essential flavor of the chicken was lacking. Masked by the lemon, herbs, aromatics, the real taste of the chicken felt muted. And combining all those ingredients, simmering them, letting the mixture cool (preferably overnight) was tedious. I always got honey all over the place, peppercorns skittering across the counter and bouncing off to crunch beneath my feet. There had to be a better way.
Now I prepare my chicken (always free-range, sometimes organic) in the morning before I leave for work. Sprinkle it with kosher salt inside and out, place it in the roasting pan on a rack, and stick it in the fridge to rest all day. When I get home, I preheat the oven, let the chicken come to room temperature. Sometimes I put a couple of sliced onions in the pan. Add a little water, or wine, so the juices don't burn. I roast the bird breast down for half an hour at high temperature (about 425), and then breast up for another half hour so the skin browns and becomes crisp, and then turn the heat down for the remaining roasting time. The chicken is perfect.
Friday, May 12, 2006
Leaving/Arriving. (Salzman/Aksyonov).
I was born in China in 1980; I arrived in America a few years later. The more than twenty years between then and now have been spent looking at both countries as a foreigner, an outsider, speaking the language (more or less; when it comes to Chinese, it's oftentimes less) but at the same time not entirely belonging. I have therefore long been fascinated by two books which have followed me for many years, one reminding me of a life I - escaped is the wrong word; perhaps I will merely say the life I was not meant to live - and the other showing me the country I call home from the viewpoint of someone newly arrived to the life I was given.
The writer Mark Salzman arrived in China in 1982 and taught English at a medical college in Changsha for two years. He arrived just as I was leaving; the country he saw is the one I might have grown up in had fate not intervened. The book Iron and Silk is about those two years he spent in China and all the experiences he had and the people he met. There is a sort of innocence to his stories, something almost surreal about these adventures of a tall, handsome, blond-and-blue-eyed American in China, like an alien feeling his way through a completely different culture and its ways, a life a million miles away from his life in the United States. I feel the faintest whisper of loss when I read this book, a reminder that when I am in China I am just as much a foreigner as Salzman was. An alien on another planet.
The year I was born, 1980, was the year Vassily Aksyonov emigrated to the United States from what was then the Soviet Union. Actually, I believe he was booted out by the government, and stripped of his citizenship, for rebelling against the Writer's Union and the censorship of the time. In high school, I came across his book In Search of Melancholy Baby (this was during the height of my fascination with Soviet literature, the first wave of it, anyway). It is a madcap dash across the world, into a new country, the writer's wide-eyed introduction to a foreign land as he simultaneously looks forward into the new life while looking back at the old one left behind. The America he writes about is the America I found when I arrived in the early 80's. Not that I remember the early 80's at all; my first clear memory of the world around me (that is, outside of my house, the neighbour's dog who brought us a live, baby rabbit, and my preschool) doesn't come until the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion in 1986. Yet I feel as though the America Aksyonov describes is something familiar, a landscape I remember. There is something comforting about his stories of the road trips he takes with his wife, Maya, criss-crossing the great expanses of this vast country, the tales of adapting to this new, strange, American life, the simultaneous terror and elation of the émigré experience, how even in a foreign country you still manage to surround yourself with the people from that previous, other life, so the old and new collide. And how different it was to be a citizen instead of merely a visitor.
The books are like time-capsules that capture a moment, a long bygone era, so clearly and vividly that I can see the life I did not live. The life I was about to live. I read them again and again, always together, and I feel as though I am falling backwards into the past.
I was born in China in 1980; I arrived in America a few years later. The more than twenty years between then and now have been spent looking at both countries as a foreigner, an outsider, speaking the language (more or less; when it comes to Chinese, it's oftentimes less) but at the same time not entirely belonging. I have therefore long been fascinated by two books which have followed me for many years, one reminding me of a life I - escaped is the wrong word; perhaps I will merely say the life I was not meant to live - and the other showing me the country I call home from the viewpoint of someone newly arrived to the life I was given.
The writer Mark Salzman arrived in China in 1982 and taught English at a medical college in Changsha for two years. He arrived just as I was leaving; the country he saw is the one I might have grown up in had fate not intervened. The book Iron and Silk is about those two years he spent in China and all the experiences he had and the people he met. There is a sort of innocence to his stories, something almost surreal about these adventures of a tall, handsome, blond-and-blue-eyed American in China, like an alien feeling his way through a completely different culture and its ways, a life a million miles away from his life in the United States. I feel the faintest whisper of loss when I read this book, a reminder that when I am in China I am just as much a foreigner as Salzman was. An alien on another planet.
The year I was born, 1980, was the year Vassily Aksyonov emigrated to the United States from what was then the Soviet Union. Actually, I believe he was booted out by the government, and stripped of his citizenship, for rebelling against the Writer's Union and the censorship of the time. In high school, I came across his book In Search of Melancholy Baby (this was during the height of my fascination with Soviet literature, the first wave of it, anyway). It is a madcap dash across the world, into a new country, the writer's wide-eyed introduction to a foreign land as he simultaneously looks forward into the new life while looking back at the old one left behind. The America he writes about is the America I found when I arrived in the early 80's. Not that I remember the early 80's at all; my first clear memory of the world around me (that is, outside of my house, the neighbour's dog who brought us a live, baby rabbit, and my preschool) doesn't come until the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion in 1986. Yet I feel as though the America Aksyonov describes is something familiar, a landscape I remember. There is something comforting about his stories of the road trips he takes with his wife, Maya, criss-crossing the great expanses of this vast country, the tales of adapting to this new, strange, American life, the simultaneous terror and elation of the émigré experience, how even in a foreign country you still manage to surround yourself with the people from that previous, other life, so the old and new collide. And how different it was to be a citizen instead of merely a visitor.
The books are like time-capsules that capture a moment, a long bygone era, so clearly and vividly that I can see the life I did not live. The life I was about to live. I read them again and again, always together, and I feel as though I am falling backwards into the past.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Why cook?
Friends of my parents often look at me in astonishment when I tell them I cook for myself. "My child only knows how to make instant noodles." "I don't even cook when my husband is out of town...I just boil some dumplings." I admit to days when all I can manage is a bowl of instant noodles. (Even then I have to make my own modifications - throw out the freeze-dried vegetables, ugh, rinse the noodles with hot water so they're not as salty, add a beaten egg). Sometimes I make pancakes or french toast - when I was in high school and my parents were out to dinner, I'd make these rare treats, drowning everything in a sea of maple syrup. But usually I make some effort. Rice, some kind of vegetable, sauteed or roasted or stir-fried, a piece of fish or steak or chicken, pork braised with soy sauce, wine, vinegar, sugar, a little garlic and ginger. Sometimes pasta, tossed together with stir-fried vegetable or layered in small casseroles and baked. It only takes a little time and effort. Leftovers are for lunch the next day, or dinner, so I only need to cook every other day. Co-workers look at me incredulously. "You make your own chicken teriyaki?" "It's no trouble," I say. "You get the hang of de-boning the chicken thighs." I get a snort of disbelief in reply. Some things I have cooked so many times I don't need a recipe, measure ingredients, follow directions. Or I make things up as I go.
Things taste better when you cook them yourself. You can adjust things to how you like them, add extra cheese, cut back on sugar. Experiment with whatever takes your fancy. I love finding recipes, from books, magazines, on the internet. When I cook alone I can try things before making them for other people, test things that no one else will eat. I love restaurants, but there is something about starting with a pile of ingredients, a run around the grocery store with a list a mile long, or just finding something interesting at the farmer's market, and creating a dish, either of your own invention or a recipe you've always wanted to try.
Food has been an important part of my life for longer than I can remember. It makes a difference that both my parents appreciate food, and will eat almost anything (aside from a few allergies). I was made to at least try everything on the table, even if I couldn't bring myself to finish it. My cousin likes to tell me how I, when I was five, struggled to eat a bowl of soup that contained wood ears, a kind of mushroom, before I was allowed to have a piece of candy (strictly rationed by my parents). Finally, unable to stand it any longer, I turned to her with a face full of misery and said, "It's just not worth it." I have other phobias, too, but they are few and far between, thanks to parents who made me eat everything. If you try everything at least once, you may surprise yourself by actually liking it. And we cook together. All the time. It is something we do, as a family, gather together at the kitchen table for dinner, no matter how busy we are. In middle school my friends and I often cooked together (see the post about crêpes), and even though the friends have changed, we still do. Cooking was something you did with love, for the people you love, with the people you love. Food is love, for me. It is how I express my feelings for the people I care about. I don't say, "I love you," I say, "Have you eaten yet?" or "Have some more."
My reality is that it is important to cook, even when it's just for me. I love the tactile pleasure of it, the rythm of chopping ingredients, the feel of the knife in my hand as it slides through vegetables, the anticipation of things cooking, flavors coming together. I love the sounds of cooking, the snick-snick-snick of the gas burners, the sizzle of food hitting hot oil, and the smell of food filling the air. I love having people come in the door, sniffing in anticipation. "I could smell the turkey from the sidewalk," they tell me. "Smells good," my friends say as they walk in, shedding coats and shoes, into the kitchen filled with the spicy warmth of lasagne, mingled with the perfume of chocolate as the brownies finish baking. My family lives in another country, and we see each other only every few months at most. But when they are here, we cook together. That dance around the kitchen as we pass ingredients, trade utensils, move aside so someone can have their chance at the cutting board, checking on pots simmering on the stove or things baking in the oven, tasting as we go. Everyone's home again.
Friends of my parents often look at me in astonishment when I tell them I cook for myself. "My child only knows how to make instant noodles." "I don't even cook when my husband is out of town...I just boil some dumplings." I admit to days when all I can manage is a bowl of instant noodles. (Even then I have to make my own modifications - throw out the freeze-dried vegetables, ugh, rinse the noodles with hot water so they're not as salty, add a beaten egg). Sometimes I make pancakes or french toast - when I was in high school and my parents were out to dinner, I'd make these rare treats, drowning everything in a sea of maple syrup. But usually I make some effort. Rice, some kind of vegetable, sauteed or roasted or stir-fried, a piece of fish or steak or chicken, pork braised with soy sauce, wine, vinegar, sugar, a little garlic and ginger. Sometimes pasta, tossed together with stir-fried vegetable or layered in small casseroles and baked. It only takes a little time and effort. Leftovers are for lunch the next day, or dinner, so I only need to cook every other day. Co-workers look at me incredulously. "You make your own chicken teriyaki?" "It's no trouble," I say. "You get the hang of de-boning the chicken thighs." I get a snort of disbelief in reply. Some things I have cooked so many times I don't need a recipe, measure ingredients, follow directions. Or I make things up as I go.
Things taste better when you cook them yourself. You can adjust things to how you like them, add extra cheese, cut back on sugar. Experiment with whatever takes your fancy. I love finding recipes, from books, magazines, on the internet. When I cook alone I can try things before making them for other people, test things that no one else will eat. I love restaurants, but there is something about starting with a pile of ingredients, a run around the grocery store with a list a mile long, or just finding something interesting at the farmer's market, and creating a dish, either of your own invention or a recipe you've always wanted to try.
Food has been an important part of my life for longer than I can remember. It makes a difference that both my parents appreciate food, and will eat almost anything (aside from a few allergies). I was made to at least try everything on the table, even if I couldn't bring myself to finish it. My cousin likes to tell me how I, when I was five, struggled to eat a bowl of soup that contained wood ears, a kind of mushroom, before I was allowed to have a piece of candy (strictly rationed by my parents). Finally, unable to stand it any longer, I turned to her with a face full of misery and said, "It's just not worth it." I have other phobias, too, but they are few and far between, thanks to parents who made me eat everything. If you try everything at least once, you may surprise yourself by actually liking it. And we cook together. All the time. It is something we do, as a family, gather together at the kitchen table for dinner, no matter how busy we are. In middle school my friends and I often cooked together (see the post about crêpes), and even though the friends have changed, we still do. Cooking was something you did with love, for the people you love, with the people you love. Food is love, for me. It is how I express my feelings for the people I care about. I don't say, "I love you," I say, "Have you eaten yet?" or "Have some more."
My reality is that it is important to cook, even when it's just for me. I love the tactile pleasure of it, the rythm of chopping ingredients, the feel of the knife in my hand as it slides through vegetables, the anticipation of things cooking, flavors coming together. I love the sounds of cooking, the snick-snick-snick of the gas burners, the sizzle of food hitting hot oil, and the smell of food filling the air. I love having people come in the door, sniffing in anticipation. "I could smell the turkey from the sidewalk," they tell me. "Smells good," my friends say as they walk in, shedding coats and shoes, into the kitchen filled with the spicy warmth of lasagne, mingled with the perfume of chocolate as the brownies finish baking. My family lives in another country, and we see each other only every few months at most. But when they are here, we cook together. That dance around the kitchen as we pass ingredients, trade utensils, move aside so someone can have their chance at the cutting board, checking on pots simmering on the stove or things baking in the oven, tasting as we go. Everyone's home again.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Memory. Konigsberg. (reading).
I have been reading the works of E. L. Konigsberg since I was a child. It started with The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which has long remained one of my favorite books. Two children, a brother and sister, run away from home. They hide out at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, one of my favorite places in the world. As they deal with their own issues, as siblings, as the oldest child, as the middle child, as they cope with day-to-day living in the museum, dodging security guards and scraping together money for food and laundry, they uncover a mystery about a statue on display and try to solve it. Finally, they meet the reclusive Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and all the clues fall into place. They come away changed, both in what they learn about themselves and their relationship with each other.
There are so many books by Konigsberg that I love. They are mostly about children who are smart, curious, sometimes alienated, sometimes searching for something. In those preteen years when you are no longer a child but not yet a teenager; childhood is ending but adolescence is still just out of reach. Often they are outsiders uninterested in being part of the crowd, or a group of outsiders who find themselves in each other. Many of the stories involve unraveling a mystery that reveals more about the character than the answers they are seeking. Sometimes they are learning about love, the pain and exhilaration of still being a child and just beginning to see what it might be like to become an adult. Frequently they are finding out about what is right or what is fair and how out in the world unprotected by the people who love you some things are neither right nor fair. They are set in the pale dawn of that world that marks the beginning of the end of innocence.
When I am burned out by the disillusionment and despair and darkness in long bleak novels by writers with unpronouncable names I come back to these stories from childhood. The tales of children discovering who they are and what they believe and how they learn what is right and fair even if the world sometimes is neither. And that feeling when you are young and discovering an innocent love. That raw newness. They make me wish that I was smarter, that I read more, that I was more curious about the world I live in. I don't want to travel back in time when I was young and saw the world through twelve-year-old eyes. When I read Konigsberg I find myself looking back with nostalgia untouched by longing.
I have been reading the works of E. L. Konigsberg since I was a child. It started with The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which has long remained one of my favorite books. Two children, a brother and sister, run away from home. They hide out at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, one of my favorite places in the world. As they deal with their own issues, as siblings, as the oldest child, as the middle child, as they cope with day-to-day living in the museum, dodging security guards and scraping together money for food and laundry, they uncover a mystery about a statue on display and try to solve it. Finally, they meet the reclusive Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and all the clues fall into place. They come away changed, both in what they learn about themselves and their relationship with each other.
There are so many books by Konigsberg that I love. They are mostly about children who are smart, curious, sometimes alienated, sometimes searching for something. In those preteen years when you are no longer a child but not yet a teenager; childhood is ending but adolescence is still just out of reach. Often they are outsiders uninterested in being part of the crowd, or a group of outsiders who find themselves in each other. Many of the stories involve unraveling a mystery that reveals more about the character than the answers they are seeking. Sometimes they are learning about love, the pain and exhilaration of still being a child and just beginning to see what it might be like to become an adult. Frequently they are finding out about what is right or what is fair and how out in the world unprotected by the people who love you some things are neither right nor fair. They are set in the pale dawn of that world that marks the beginning of the end of innocence.
When I am burned out by the disillusionment and despair and darkness in long bleak novels by writers with unpronouncable names I come back to these stories from childhood. The tales of children discovering who they are and what they believe and how they learn what is right and fair even if the world sometimes is neither. And that feeling when you are young and discovering an innocent love. That raw newness. They make me wish that I was smarter, that I read more, that I was more curious about the world I live in. I don't want to travel back in time when I was young and saw the world through twelve-year-old eyes. When I read Konigsberg I find myself looking back with nostalgia untouched by longing.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Cookware. Le Creuset. (obsessions).
I first acquired a Le Creuset enameled cast-iron french oven a few years ago. It was on sale, but I still trembled a little as I paid for it. Quickly it became my favorite pot for making soups, stews, and braises. It became an obsession. Someone gave me a larger one. I use that one for making stock. A friend gave me a skillet, with a black enamel interior, that sears my steak perfectly each time. A trip to the outlet mall yielded a rectangular baking dish; another trip scored a grill pan, perfect for making grilled sandwiches or cooking bacon. Each piece is cherry-red, brightening my kitchen every time I use it, which is often. Sometimes I use several pots at once.
Of course all this enameled cast-iron weighs a bloody ton, even when empty. A pot of stew is extremely difficult to handle, especially when piping hot. If you haven't got any upper-body strength, you quickly gain some. And it's expensive. If you can afford a full set of it, good for you. My collection has slowly been culled together from kitchenware shop sales, outlet malls, gifts from generous friends and family. And I use it all. The pots are fantastic for making soups, because the heavy cast-iron keeps everything at a barely bubbling simmer on low heat and the equally heavy lid prevents evaporation; the chicken soup I make in the round french (dutch) oven is the best I have ever tasted, clear, golden, intense. (An ordinary pot of stainless steel comes to a boil too quickly; it's harder to control the heat and maintain a slow simmer). I have written at great length about the beef braised in Guinness in that same pot. My steak forms a deep brown, savory crust when cooked in the lightly oiled skillet. The grilled cheese sandwiches are perfectly striped, toasted bread oozing molten cheese. I bake lasagnes until bubbly around the edges and roast chickens in my baking dish. When I look at my cherry-red cookware stacked neatly in cupboards, lounging insouciantly on countertops (when I am too lazy to put them away) I keep thinking about all the good things I will make in them, the ingredients that will fill the pale beige-enameled interiors, sear and simmer in their weighty cast-iron embrace.
I first acquired a Le Creuset enameled cast-iron french oven a few years ago. It was on sale, but I still trembled a little as I paid for it. Quickly it became my favorite pot for making soups, stews, and braises. It became an obsession. Someone gave me a larger one. I use that one for making stock. A friend gave me a skillet, with a black enamel interior, that sears my steak perfectly each time. A trip to the outlet mall yielded a rectangular baking dish; another trip scored a grill pan, perfect for making grilled sandwiches or cooking bacon. Each piece is cherry-red, brightening my kitchen every time I use it, which is often. Sometimes I use several pots at once.
Of course all this enameled cast-iron weighs a bloody ton, even when empty. A pot of stew is extremely difficult to handle, especially when piping hot. If you haven't got any upper-body strength, you quickly gain some. And it's expensive. If you can afford a full set of it, good for you. My collection has slowly been culled together from kitchenware shop sales, outlet malls, gifts from generous friends and family. And I use it all. The pots are fantastic for making soups, because the heavy cast-iron keeps everything at a barely bubbling simmer on low heat and the equally heavy lid prevents evaporation; the chicken soup I make in the round french (dutch) oven is the best I have ever tasted, clear, golden, intense. (An ordinary pot of stainless steel comes to a boil too quickly; it's harder to control the heat and maintain a slow simmer). I have written at great length about the beef braised in Guinness in that same pot. My steak forms a deep brown, savory crust when cooked in the lightly oiled skillet. The grilled cheese sandwiches are perfectly striped, toasted bread oozing molten cheese. I bake lasagnes until bubbly around the edges and roast chickens in my baking dish. When I look at my cherry-red cookware stacked neatly in cupboards, lounging insouciantly on countertops (when I am too lazy to put them away) I keep thinking about all the good things I will make in them, the ingredients that will fill the pale beige-enameled interiors, sear and simmer in their weighty cast-iron embrace.
How it all began. (cooking). (part 1).
One of my earliest memories is of being in the kitchen. Standing on a stepladder at the kitchen sink, washing mushrooms. Carefully rubbing away all the dirt under running water, until each mushroom was gleaming white, perfect. I cannot have been more than four years old. That is where it all began. Washing vegetables was the first thing I learned to do in the kitchen. Then came learning how to measure the ingredients, waiting for my mother's hands to crack the eggs so I could stir packets of mix together into a batter. Next came permission to use the oven. Cakes, brownies, and cookies were the first things I learned how to make. Waiting for the timer to go off, the kitchen filling with the smell of baking, impatiently waiting as things cooled on wire racks. I can't remember which came next, being allowed to use knives or the stove. As I got older I did more prep work for my mother, washing things, chopping vegetables, ("the scallions need to be sliced finer than that," "I said STRIPS, not CHUNKS, pay attention next time!"), cooking rice in the rice machine.
In her book Home Cooking, or maybe it is the sequel More Home Cooking, Laurie Colwin says something about how in order to learn how to cook, you had to either have the good fortune to have been born Chinese or be able to afford help. I was lucky to be born Chinese. It comes with a) the ability to eat almost anything, no matter how disgusting, and b) the habit of thinking about (or better yet, plannning) your next meal even before you've finished eating the previous one.
Cooking is a pleasure. There are times when it is a burden, when I stagger home late after work and wind up eating a bowl of cereal and drinking a beer, or having a banana and a bowl of ice cream. It happens more often than I would like to admit. But most of the time, I will cook for myself, the foods of my childhood or the American foods I never ate as a child (macaroni and cheese, meatloaf, mashed potatoes). I learned to cook from my parents. It started with doing the prep work, chopping things and putting them in bowls before my mom came downstairs to cook, then one dish at dinner, which would be critiqued ("Not so much soy sauce next time." "The garlic is a little burned." "I think you should have taken the chicken out of the oven five minutes sooner."). As I got older I sometimes made the entire meal, at least three or four dishes, using several pots, two or three burners (on some occasions, all four), and the oven all at the same time. Then more criticism ("You need to work on the timing." "The vegetables have gone cold."). And I learned, dish by dish. Getting better at cooking was its own reward.
One of my earliest memories is of being in the kitchen. Standing on a stepladder at the kitchen sink, washing mushrooms. Carefully rubbing away all the dirt under running water, until each mushroom was gleaming white, perfect. I cannot have been more than four years old. That is where it all began. Washing vegetables was the first thing I learned to do in the kitchen. Then came learning how to measure the ingredients, waiting for my mother's hands to crack the eggs so I could stir packets of mix together into a batter. Next came permission to use the oven. Cakes, brownies, and cookies were the first things I learned how to make. Waiting for the timer to go off, the kitchen filling with the smell of baking, impatiently waiting as things cooled on wire racks. I can't remember which came next, being allowed to use knives or the stove. As I got older I did more prep work for my mother, washing things, chopping vegetables, ("the scallions need to be sliced finer than that," "I said STRIPS, not CHUNKS, pay attention next time!"), cooking rice in the rice machine.
In her book Home Cooking, or maybe it is the sequel More Home Cooking, Laurie Colwin says something about how in order to learn how to cook, you had to either have the good fortune to have been born Chinese or be able to afford help. I was lucky to be born Chinese. It comes with a) the ability to eat almost anything, no matter how disgusting, and b) the habit of thinking about (or better yet, plannning) your next meal even before you've finished eating the previous one.
Cooking is a pleasure. There are times when it is a burden, when I stagger home late after work and wind up eating a bowl of cereal and drinking a beer, or having a banana and a bowl of ice cream. It happens more often than I would like to admit. But most of the time, I will cook for myself, the foods of my childhood or the American foods I never ate as a child (macaroni and cheese, meatloaf, mashed potatoes). I learned to cook from my parents. It started with doing the prep work, chopping things and putting them in bowls before my mom came downstairs to cook, then one dish at dinner, which would be critiqued ("Not so much soy sauce next time." "The garlic is a little burned." "I think you should have taken the chicken out of the oven five minutes sooner."). As I got older I sometimes made the entire meal, at least three or four dishes, using several pots, two or three burners (on some occasions, all four), and the oven all at the same time. Then more criticism ("You need to work on the timing." "The vegetables have gone cold."). And I learned, dish by dish. Getting better at cooking was its own reward.
Monday, May 08, 2006
Reading. Ferlinghetti. (poetry). (part 2).
I must confess that have not read much poetry in my time. It has always been something I have fallen into, accidentally, for a class, or for the sheer pleasure of language during times I have been learning other languages besides my own. Something apart from the literature which mostly consumes me. I have always felt, as someone who needs words in order to live, that poetry did not contain enough words for me, that I preferred the long meandering of novels, the space into which I could fall into the endless depths of a story, into another world outside my own. It has not been until the past several months that I have been reading more and more poetry. Which all started with Bukowski, and then onto Ferlinghetti. Whom I love more than anything. No, that's not true. I love him differently than, say, Bukowski. The latter caught me off-guard; what I felt for him was a surprise, almost a physical shock. Ferlinghetti was like...falling in love with your best friend, someone you've known and loved forever but you haven't really seen them until one day, you realize that what you've always wanted is right there in front of you. That feeling of something exciting and new and yet somehow something that makes you feel safe.
My favorite poem is from A Far Rockaway of the Heart. It's simply called, #2, the second poem in that volume. (On the page the poem looks different; the way Ferlinghetti arranges his sentences, cantilevered words veering off into space).
Driving a cardboard automobile without a license
at the turn of the century
my father ran into my mother
on a fun-ride at Coney Island
having spied each other eating
in a French boarding-house nearby
And having decided right there and then
that she was for him entirely
he followed her into
the playland of that evening
where the headlong meeting
of their ephemeral flesh on wheels
hurtled them together forever
And I now in the backseat
of their eternity
reaching out to embrace them
Reading it aloud seems to carry me along in this breathless rush, this certainty of love, I almost feel like I can't breathe when I read it. I love the part where he says "And having decided right there and then/that she was for him entirely." That absoluteness of it grips me around the heart, stops me headlong, sends me reeling.
I must confess that have not read much poetry in my time. It has always been something I have fallen into, accidentally, for a class, or for the sheer pleasure of language during times I have been learning other languages besides my own. Something apart from the literature which mostly consumes me. I have always felt, as someone who needs words in order to live, that poetry did not contain enough words for me, that I preferred the long meandering of novels, the space into which I could fall into the endless depths of a story, into another world outside my own. It has not been until the past several months that I have been reading more and more poetry. Which all started with Bukowski, and then onto Ferlinghetti. Whom I love more than anything. No, that's not true. I love him differently than, say, Bukowski. The latter caught me off-guard; what I felt for him was a surprise, almost a physical shock. Ferlinghetti was like...falling in love with your best friend, someone you've known and loved forever but you haven't really seen them until one day, you realize that what you've always wanted is right there in front of you. That feeling of something exciting and new and yet somehow something that makes you feel safe.
My favorite poem is from A Far Rockaway of the Heart. It's simply called, #2, the second poem in that volume. (On the page the poem looks different; the way Ferlinghetti arranges his sentences, cantilevered words veering off into space).
Driving a cardboard automobile without a license
at the turn of the century
my father ran into my mother
on a fun-ride at Coney Island
having spied each other eating
in a French boarding-house nearby
And having decided right there and then
that she was for him entirely
he followed her into
the playland of that evening
where the headlong meeting
of their ephemeral flesh on wheels
hurtled them together forever
And I now in the backseat
of their eternity
reaching out to embrace them
Reading it aloud seems to carry me along in this breathless rush, this certainty of love, I almost feel like I can't breathe when I read it. I love the part where he says "And having decided right there and then/that she was for him entirely." That absoluteness of it grips me around the heart, stops me headlong, sends me reeling.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
The Wandering Gourmand. Portugal. (Part 2). (Bacalhau and beyond).
I wrote earlier about how I managed to eat inhumane amounts of cod while in Portugal. Probably twice a day. (I was lucky not to have it at breakfast, I suppose). Each time it was cooked differently. There must be millions of recipes for bacalhau, the dried and salted codfish that is a staple of Portuguese cuisine. My most favorite dish was the cakes of mashed potato and cod, fried until crisp on the outside (which I had twice, in Guimarães, and Monte de Santa Luzia). But I also had cod wrapped in phyllo (Guimarães), braised with onions and tomatoes (Bom Jesus), topped with tomatoes and mayonnaise and baked (Monte de Santa Luzia), roasted with potatoes (Crato), in a soup with beans and spinach (Beja). And on and on. Cod is a strange fish, bland and plain, falling apart in thick white flakes. It takes on the flavors of whatever you cook it with, and takes beautifully to almost any cooking method or seasoning.
Another thing that I really liked was the chorizo. In Monte de Santa Luzia we ate at a Pousada perched high above the city, with the view of the harbor and the ocean below. As an appetizer I had chorizo grilled until the skin was so crisp that the sausage broke apart and spilled the spicy-sweet, loosely packed filling all over the plate. It was fantastic. And everywhere we went my mother ordered octopus, which was nearly always served with boiled potato, hot or cold. After an unfortunate incident in Spain (which I will describe later), I was unable to eat octopus again for the remainder of the trip.
However, Portuguese desserts remained a mystery to me. Excruciatingly sweet, they all had the violent yellow color of egg yolks, and indeed, tended to be made entirely of egg yolks and sugar. There was usually a wide array of weird puddings and sticky, fruit/nut/cream-laden cakes. I spent a lot of time looking at the dessert table with a confused expression on my face. Fortunately, we were usually too full for dessert (except for one member of our party, who will remain nameless, but was not me, nearly always demanded some ice cream), although in Beja we had an intensely orange-flavored cake, and a moist and sticky walnut cake. In Bélem, I had a plate of incredibly ripe, sweet, mango, sliced and covered with passionfruit seeds, tart and unbelievably fragrant. Sometimes all you need is the freshest, ripest fruit you can find.
I wrote earlier about how I managed to eat inhumane amounts of cod while in Portugal. Probably twice a day. (I was lucky not to have it at breakfast, I suppose). Each time it was cooked differently. There must be millions of recipes for bacalhau, the dried and salted codfish that is a staple of Portuguese cuisine. My most favorite dish was the cakes of mashed potato and cod, fried until crisp on the outside (which I had twice, in Guimarães, and Monte de Santa Luzia). But I also had cod wrapped in phyllo (Guimarães), braised with onions and tomatoes (Bom Jesus), topped with tomatoes and mayonnaise and baked (Monte de Santa Luzia), roasted with potatoes (Crato), in a soup with beans and spinach (Beja). And on and on. Cod is a strange fish, bland and plain, falling apart in thick white flakes. It takes on the flavors of whatever you cook it with, and takes beautifully to almost any cooking method or seasoning.
Another thing that I really liked was the chorizo. In Monte de Santa Luzia we ate at a Pousada perched high above the city, with the view of the harbor and the ocean below. As an appetizer I had chorizo grilled until the skin was so crisp that the sausage broke apart and spilled the spicy-sweet, loosely packed filling all over the plate. It was fantastic. And everywhere we went my mother ordered octopus, which was nearly always served with boiled potato, hot or cold. After an unfortunate incident in Spain (which I will describe later), I was unable to eat octopus again for the remainder of the trip.
However, Portuguese desserts remained a mystery to me. Excruciatingly sweet, they all had the violent yellow color of egg yolks, and indeed, tended to be made entirely of egg yolks and sugar. There was usually a wide array of weird puddings and sticky, fruit/nut/cream-laden cakes. I spent a lot of time looking at the dessert table with a confused expression on my face. Fortunately, we were usually too full for dessert (except for one member of our party, who will remain nameless, but was not me, nearly always demanded some ice cream), although in Beja we had an intensely orange-flavored cake, and a moist and sticky walnut cake. In Bélem, I had a plate of incredibly ripe, sweet, mango, sliced and covered with passionfruit seeds, tart and unbelievably fragrant. Sometimes all you need is the freshest, ripest fruit you can find.
Reading. (it's all a coincidence).
My life, my literary one, is full of coincidences, chance meetings, things suddenly remembered that come back from the distant past. I wrote last night about The Master and Margarita, but I didn't mention how I started reading it. If I remember correctly, my high school put out a little pamphlet of book recommendations submitted by students and teachers every year, and it had been amongst the entries. After I had been reading it for a while, it occurred to me that a classmate had mumbled something about how, if I was interested in Russian literature (we had been talking about Solzhenitsyn, I think, who I had discovered the year before), I should read Bulgakov. Only I didn't understand him, and I didn't know who Bulgakov was, and I was too shy to ask him to repeat the name. (I may have had a bit of a crush on him). And then I found a letter from three years before, from a Russian friend, who mentioned how her favorite novel was The Master and Margarita and she had used it as her text for her Literature final exam and how it had been censored and never translated. (She was wrong about it not being translated. It has been, and there are at least three or four different translations out there). It hadn't registered with me before. It is so strange to look back and find these coincidences, things that might have been different had you been aware of them at the time.
Last weekend I was at the Burning Word poetry festival, where I was introduced to the poetry of Ilya Kaminsky. I was there at the recommendation of a friend, who I think had found Ilya's writing through another friend. When I came back I could not resist the temptation to find out more about him (where would we be without Google?). And here I found a surprise. When Ilya and his family emigrated to the United States in 1993, they went to Rochester, New York, where there is a significant Russian (and I'm assuming, Ukrainian) émigré population. He studied as an undergraduate at the University of Rochester, as did I, a few years behind (how long ago this all seems). There is no way of knowing whether our paths crossed or not, but they could have. How strange that we have this shared connection, but at the same time it is not so strange, given my long-standing passion for Russian literature and poetry, which started even before I was at university, and the large Russian community in Rochester, where Ilya arrived over a decade ago. And yet I found him through a chance remark from a friend. Several years and three thousand miles from where we both began. Everything is all a matter of timing. And fate.
My life, my literary one, is full of coincidences, chance meetings, things suddenly remembered that come back from the distant past. I wrote last night about The Master and Margarita, but I didn't mention how I started reading it. If I remember correctly, my high school put out a little pamphlet of book recommendations submitted by students and teachers every year, and it had been amongst the entries. After I had been reading it for a while, it occurred to me that a classmate had mumbled something about how, if I was interested in Russian literature (we had been talking about Solzhenitsyn, I think, who I had discovered the year before), I should read Bulgakov. Only I didn't understand him, and I didn't know who Bulgakov was, and I was too shy to ask him to repeat the name. (I may have had a bit of a crush on him). And then I found a letter from three years before, from a Russian friend, who mentioned how her favorite novel was The Master and Margarita and she had used it as her text for her Literature final exam and how it had been censored and never translated. (She was wrong about it not being translated. It has been, and there are at least three or four different translations out there). It hadn't registered with me before. It is so strange to look back and find these coincidences, things that might have been different had you been aware of them at the time.
Last weekend I was at the Burning Word poetry festival, where I was introduced to the poetry of Ilya Kaminsky. I was there at the recommendation of a friend, who I think had found Ilya's writing through another friend. When I came back I could not resist the temptation to find out more about him (where would we be without Google?). And here I found a surprise. When Ilya and his family emigrated to the United States in 1993, they went to Rochester, New York, where there is a significant Russian (and I'm assuming, Ukrainian) émigré population. He studied as an undergraduate at the University of Rochester, as did I, a few years behind (how long ago this all seems). There is no way of knowing whether our paths crossed or not, but they could have. How strange that we have this shared connection, but at the same time it is not so strange, given my long-standing passion for Russian literature and poetry, which started even before I was at university, and the large Russian community in Rochester, where Ilya arrived over a decade ago. And yet I found him through a chance remark from a friend. Several years and three thousand miles from where we both began. Everything is all a matter of timing. And fate.
Saturday, May 06, 2006
Memory (Reading). The Master and Margarita.
I first read The Master and Margarita ten years ago. It was springtime. That is, I read the first chapter, got completely confused, put it down, and didn't come back to it until a couple of months later. I had trouble following the characters, the conversations, the intricacy of Bulgakov's writing. I didn't know Vanya was short for Ivan, or about Pontius Pilate. Or the significance of various people and events that appeared throughout the story, the culture of repression, Stalinism, and paranoia of the time. That all came later. So I waited. August came, and I went on a week-long hiking trip. I only had space for one book, so I brought it along. On the long drive out to the mountains, at night by flashlight, during various breaks I waded slowly through, again, and the interweaving stories of The Master and Margarita began to take on more coherence for me, fall into place. I was getting the hang of all the names, the characters, the switching back and forth between modern-day (that is, 1930's) Moscow and its various inhabitants and the story of Jesus and Pontius Pilate.
I have said before that it takes me time to fall in love with something. This all started with The Master and Margarita. I learned Russian in order to read it in the original Russian (as a mysterious Russian man in a movie theater once suggested I do). It was the only promise I have ever kept. In this novel I found words taking shape, ideas presented to me in such a beautiful, extraordinary way that when I read it I slowly felt my heart shattering into a million pieces and my mind begin to catch on fire...I come back to it again and again, and each time I fall in love even more, I discover something new, both about the book and myself. I have always loved to read, since I was a child, but with this novel something entirely different began to happen with the way I read, with the way I think about literature. It changed everything. Later, other writers (Eco, Calvino, Kundera) would focus and clarify my thoughts on literature, why I read, what I love most about it, but for the better part of the past decade this has been my greatest literary obsession, my deepest love.
It is my beginning, and my end.
I first read The Master and Margarita ten years ago. It was springtime. That is, I read the first chapter, got completely confused, put it down, and didn't come back to it until a couple of months later. I had trouble following the characters, the conversations, the intricacy of Bulgakov's writing. I didn't know Vanya was short for Ivan, or about Pontius Pilate. Or the significance of various people and events that appeared throughout the story, the culture of repression, Stalinism, and paranoia of the time. That all came later. So I waited. August came, and I went on a week-long hiking trip. I only had space for one book, so I brought it along. On the long drive out to the mountains, at night by flashlight, during various breaks I waded slowly through, again, and the interweaving stories of The Master and Margarita began to take on more coherence for me, fall into place. I was getting the hang of all the names, the characters, the switching back and forth between modern-day (that is, 1930's) Moscow and its various inhabitants and the story of Jesus and Pontius Pilate.
I have said before that it takes me time to fall in love with something. This all started with The Master and Margarita. I learned Russian in order to read it in the original Russian (as a mysterious Russian man in a movie theater once suggested I do). It was the only promise I have ever kept. In this novel I found words taking shape, ideas presented to me in such a beautiful, extraordinary way that when I read it I slowly felt my heart shattering into a million pieces and my mind begin to catch on fire...I come back to it again and again, and each time I fall in love even more, I discover something new, both about the book and myself. I have always loved to read, since I was a child, but with this novel something entirely different began to happen with the way I read, with the way I think about literature. It changed everything. Later, other writers (Eco, Calvino, Kundera) would focus and clarify my thoughts on literature, why I read, what I love most about it, but for the better part of the past decade this has been my greatest literary obsession, my deepest love.
It is my beginning, and my end.
The Wandering Gourmand. Portugal. (Part 1).
Somehow I wound up spending two weeks in January and February driving around Portugal and Spain with three members of my family. It was insane. Essentially we were eating our way around the two countries, starting from Lisbon, heading north up the coast, over the border into Spain, and then back into Portugal. Much presunto (Portugal) and jamon (Spain) was consumed, darkly rosy slices of ham, slightly thicker than the tissue-thin prosciutto of Italy, salty-sweet, intense, and totally addictive. Inhuman (or perhaps I mean inhumane) amounts of cod were eaten, prepared in more ways than I thought possible.
I am not very familiar with Spanish cuisine, and Portuguese cuisine is even more of a mystery. As far as I could tell the latter involved huge amounts of beans, kale, chorizo, and seafood (mainly the inveitable bacalhau). In Portugal we ate at various Pousadas along the way. Pousadas are a chain of forty or so hotels all over Portugal, organized into several categories - historical, charm, nature, and, I think, architecture, and they all have restaurants that serve dishes of that particular region, so that while all the Pousadas have menus that are somewhat similar, each of them vary according to the local cuisine. The historical Pousadas are the most interesting, as they are housed in historical monuments - monastaries, convents, castles, that have been remodeled into hotels. The cooking was unfailingly elegant, refined, and absolutely delicious.
Looking over my notes from those two weeks, it is hard to find a single meal that stands out particularly clearly. I see only an endless parade of delicious things (and, again, an inhumane amount of bacalhau), with only the occasional slightly indifferent stew or rice dish. It was a completely different kind of cooking from anything I had experienced before. Portuguese cooking is earthy, hearty, simple, even when done lightly and elegantly. A combination of flavors and textures totally new to me. I cannot wait to go back.
Somehow I wound up spending two weeks in January and February driving around Portugal and Spain with three members of my family. It was insane. Essentially we were eating our way around the two countries, starting from Lisbon, heading north up the coast, over the border into Spain, and then back into Portugal. Much presunto (Portugal) and jamon (Spain) was consumed, darkly rosy slices of ham, slightly thicker than the tissue-thin prosciutto of Italy, salty-sweet, intense, and totally addictive. Inhuman (or perhaps I mean inhumane) amounts of cod were eaten, prepared in more ways than I thought possible.
I am not very familiar with Spanish cuisine, and Portuguese cuisine is even more of a mystery. As far as I could tell the latter involved huge amounts of beans, kale, chorizo, and seafood (mainly the inveitable bacalhau). In Portugal we ate at various Pousadas along the way. Pousadas are a chain of forty or so hotels all over Portugal, organized into several categories - historical, charm, nature, and, I think, architecture, and they all have restaurants that serve dishes of that particular region, so that while all the Pousadas have menus that are somewhat similar, each of them vary according to the local cuisine. The historical Pousadas are the most interesting, as they are housed in historical monuments - monastaries, convents, castles, that have been remodeled into hotels. The cooking was unfailingly elegant, refined, and absolutely delicious.
Looking over my notes from those two weeks, it is hard to find a single meal that stands out particularly clearly. I see only an endless parade of delicious things (and, again, an inhumane amount of bacalhau), with only the occasional slightly indifferent stew or rice dish. It was a completely different kind of cooking from anything I had experienced before. Portuguese cooking is earthy, hearty, simple, even when done lightly and elegantly. A combination of flavors and textures totally new to me. I cannot wait to go back.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Once again, from the beginning.
I promised myself that I would not talk about my personal life on this blog. People would be identified by initials, or by their role in my life (the boss, the co-worker,the friend). No names. I didn't want people to find my blog by Googling themselves, or something. This brings me to a conversation I had a few months back, with a co-worker. She had mentioned reading about some Christmas party at our house one year on someone's blog. When pressed for details, K. (my co-worker) couldn't remember what happened, but there was something regarding a gift exchange at the party, how this guy was deeply disappointed that he was not allowed to keep his gift because it was too girly. Although being gay, he had no problem with the girly gift and kept thinking of it (a pair of bracelets, I later found out) longingly. I kept asking K. how she had found the blog to begin with, and it turned out that K. had tried to find my phone number by Googling me, which yielded nothing, and my parents. Apparently, when you Google my father (try this, if you happen to know his name), you get several hundred articles involving his work, his area of research, various papers and seminars, and his two labs. And then, several pages in, there's the blog of a former lab technician. I'll refer to him as J. It was hilarious, and over the year or two that he worked for my (often-absent) father the blog mentioned various work-related incidents involving people I knew, including, obviously, my own father. Which led me to a second conversation.
Me: Hey dad, do you remember J.?
dad: Who?
Me: J. He used to be one of your lab technicians.
dad: Oh, J.....he's gay.
Me (thinking to myself...please let that not be the only thing you remember about him): I know he's gay. Did you know he had a blog that mentions you and the lab?
dad: Yes, I found that ages ago. How did you find it?
Me: I Googled you. Or rather, K. Googled you. How did YOU find it?
dad: Oh, I Googled myself. (At which point I started laughing hysterically and had to hang up).
All this reminded me that, when I started my own blog, I would leave out people's names. I would make my pathetic little blog as difficult to find as possible, and I would try to focus only on two things important to me: food and literature, nothing else, not things that make me crazy at work, not relationships, not the neighbors, not the remodel of my new place or my ability to get lost anywhere. I'm not entirely sure what I hoped to accomplish with this blog but I wanted to put down my thoughts on food and literature, things that I have loved for as long as I can remember and have remained important all my life. A journal of sorts. Maybe people will read and enjoy what I've written, maybe they won't. (I have the sneaking suspicion I'm the only one reading this). It doesn't matter. What matters is that I am writing again, after a long drought, and writing because I love the feel of putting words down, of sifting through experiences and memories, the feel of the keys beneath my fingers. Not because I have to write 2000 words on a novel I hated or a work of art I didn't understand. It's just me. And a blank white space waiting to be filled.
I promised myself that I would not talk about my personal life on this blog. People would be identified by initials, or by their role in my life (the boss, the co-worker,the friend). No names. I didn't want people to find my blog by Googling themselves, or something. This brings me to a conversation I had a few months back, with a co-worker. She had mentioned reading about some Christmas party at our house one year on someone's blog. When pressed for details, K. (my co-worker) couldn't remember what happened, but there was something regarding a gift exchange at the party, how this guy was deeply disappointed that he was not allowed to keep his gift because it was too girly. Although being gay, he had no problem with the girly gift and kept thinking of it (a pair of bracelets, I later found out) longingly. I kept asking K. how she had found the blog to begin with, and it turned out that K. had tried to find my phone number by Googling me, which yielded nothing, and my parents. Apparently, when you Google my father (try this, if you happen to know his name), you get several hundred articles involving his work, his area of research, various papers and seminars, and his two labs. And then, several pages in, there's the blog of a former lab technician. I'll refer to him as J. It was hilarious, and over the year or two that he worked for my (often-absent) father the blog mentioned various work-related incidents involving people I knew, including, obviously, my own father. Which led me to a second conversation.
Me: Hey dad, do you remember J.?
dad: Who?
Me: J. He used to be one of your lab technicians.
dad: Oh, J.....he's gay.
Me (thinking to myself...please let that not be the only thing you remember about him): I know he's gay. Did you know he had a blog that mentions you and the lab?
dad: Yes, I found that ages ago. How did you find it?
Me: I Googled you. Or rather, K. Googled you. How did YOU find it?
dad: Oh, I Googled myself. (At which point I started laughing hysterically and had to hang up).
All this reminded me that, when I started my own blog, I would leave out people's names. I would make my pathetic little blog as difficult to find as possible, and I would try to focus only on two things important to me: food and literature, nothing else, not things that make me crazy at work, not relationships, not the neighbors, not the remodel of my new place or my ability to get lost anywhere. I'm not entirely sure what I hoped to accomplish with this blog but I wanted to put down my thoughts on food and literature, things that I have loved for as long as I can remember and have remained important all my life. A journal of sorts. Maybe people will read and enjoy what I've written, maybe they won't. (I have the sneaking suspicion I'm the only one reading this). It doesn't matter. What matters is that I am writing again, after a long drought, and writing because I love the feel of putting words down, of sifting through experiences and memories, the feel of the keys beneath my fingers. Not because I have to write 2000 words on a novel I hated or a work of art I didn't understand. It's just me. And a blank white space waiting to be filled.
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