foodspeak

this months poetrysciencetalk reminded me what a joy it is speaking the language of food. Each month at these events I reach out to the presenter hoping to jumpstart a dialogue about the menu. I'm looking to iron out the specifics of what I might cook, but also by talking menu I hope, in a kind of 'ingredient shorthand' to have a larger conversation that reflects our personalities and illuminates where our viewpoints merge. We all know sharing food creates bridges and I like to think these bridges are also built talking about food. All one need do is mention an ingredient and suddenly you're placed like a map-pin at a particular vantage point on the time/space continuum.     

This months erudite pst speaker proposed to "look at the future of art, science, politics, medicine, and psychiatry in the emergent practices of Schizoanalysis, Orgonomy, Theosophy, Psychedelia, and Autopoesis and present a vision of possible utopian political-economic communities."   I knew I was in over my head... like what!!? Where in this was inspiration for supper?  Fortunately in his 'presentation description' the speaker mentioned Hegel, Nietzsche, and German Romanticism, which I latched onto and sent an email proposing slow-cooked traditional German: Sauerbraten, sweet-n-sour cabbage and herbed spatzel.  
But "No," he replied, "how 'bout something futuristic or sci-fi instead?" 
Which got me thinking: molecular gastronomy, Frankenfood and highly processed simulacra (cheezzzefood anyone?) In a brief volley of current buzz words: pharmaceuticals, fermentation, DIY, we pieced together an outline: the future, hippy commune, macrobiotic, Japan, California, psychedelic... 
Still even this needed coloring-in. I suggested dumpster diving and Mad Max and he countered with Barbarella- which gave me enough to begin.

Next I had the pleasure of sitting down with a food writer friend for a conversation figuring what the future might hold. We grappled with trends and ingredients to cobble an idea for a meal, a poem intertwining anxiety with hope: spiraling allergens, sodium alginate, probiotic smoothies, bacon decadence, shrink-wrap.

kelp noodles for the wild mushroom miso 

Spirulina tabs: highly nutrient-dense algae

Often I'm answered with a shrug when I try to engage a non-food person in foodspeak. Its not that they don't want to respond, its that its unfamiliar to think that food is encoded with layered iconographic meanings. Whereas they hear 'green papaya pad thai' (one of the dishes I served) and think "I like pad thai, I hate cilantro," or "green papaya?" I think about immigration waves, the economic disparities of manual labor (my fingers blistered during the hours spent hand cutting papaya shreds) and dietary roller-coasters where lower carb. gluten free green papaya is celebrated as an invention in swank trendsetting Brooklyn restaurants even though A. green papaya has been consumed all over Southeast Asia for centuries and B. pad thai is traditionally made with rice noodles which are gluten free anyway.

I was criticized by one of the pst co-founders who'd been cc'd on the original Sauerbraten email. True, he's a meddler, and also maybe he tastes sour grapes at how much fun I have conversing with the presenters, but he also just doesn't speak food. He read my list of selections as a fait accompli, accusing me of leaving the presenter out of the process. Too bad he couldn't hear the list I'd emailed as me humming a few bars enticing the presenter to hum along until we found a tune to sing together.

The menu included probiotic cocoa, avocado, and coconut milk smoothies,
bacon pecan brownies, and individually wrapped sticks of ginseng chewing gum.
 

Folks loved the meal. But they always do, each time more than the next. They are a remarkably non-critical appreciative audience happy at being fed (which is not to say they are placid or unthinking- the pst crowd is an amazingly esotericly intelligent and engaged group!) They enjoy hearing my brief pre-supper spiels describing each months menu in part because they are fascinated hearing foodspeak where food as signifier is expressively edible.

"Any time or weather-- soup and sandwich go together..."*

peas and carrots with tarragon butter

Following the tail of last month's "open love" presentation comes this month's pst discussion on "The New Monogamy" wherein author and PhD Sexologist Tammy Nelson spoke of our desires to couple with a "perfect soul-mate" and our subsequent struggles to stay faithful over time. "50% of marriages fail," she says- and yet a great percentage of divorcees go on to second and third marriages. Our instinct for coupling prevails, so Tammy proposed new ways to define fidelity, keep desire and attraction fresh, and to open dialogue within a relationship.

Easy enough to make a menu of classic food pairings including fish-n-chips, peas-n-carrots and milk-n-cookies. A nice slam bam thank you ma'am, in-n-out kinda concept- though a bit of conceptual moralizing came with picking the final menu.  Salsa and chips was an early contender  but are the chips just a vehicle for the salsa? Is salsa complete on its own or is it just a flavor enhancer for something else? This dilemma was not true for the bread-n-butter I served instead. With bread and butter each element is delicious on its own- and while we shouldn't eat pure butter, in our hearts (and to our hearts detriment) we all want too!  Mac-n-cheese was scratched because as the ingredients merge their individuality gets lost. Arroz con Pollo seemed a strong candidate, especially because there are so many variations, but in the end the complexity of the seasonings including saffron in Spain, tomatoes and peppers in Latin America, and annatto in the Caribbean relied on third party ingredients. 

For the hell of it I posted on facebook asking for suggestions and there were a few stand-outs: chocolate and roasted beets, steak and arugula, and one insistent suggestion to include "sublime" solo foods like a French double creme cheese or perfectly ripe berries...  couples be damned. 

Along with the other pairings I made rice and beans for the vegetarians and the beans were quite yummy:

1# beans (I used Jacob's Cattle but black beans or another kidney bean varietal would be good too.) Soak overnight in enough water to cover the beans by an inch or two. Drain, rinse, then put in a pot and cover beans with fresh water.

Add a large handful of diced onion and a small handful of chopped garlic and minced cilantro stems.  Gently simmer until the beans are tender, adding water as necessary. Timing will vary based on how fresh the beans are but count on at least an hour of minimal pot watching. 

Take 1-2 cups of the cooked beans and some of the cooking broth and blend to a fine puree, then stir this back into the pot. Taste for seasoning-- add salt and pepper and a glug of fruity olive oil. Serve with rice. 

                                       

*the title of this post comes from a Campbell's soup ad from the 1960's that used the melody of "Love and Marriage," a song Frank Sinatra made famous in 1955.

on-line open-love wearing google glasses

a meal about making choices- each eater had to
decide how to liven up their colorless plates. 

My goal with the pst meal is to have the menu in some way reflect the talk, or at least the personality of the speaker. This manifests different ways-- sometimes the connection is literal, like for a talk about ecstatic Dervishes we ate Persian rice and kebobs. Other times the foods materiality illustrates the talk. One month the speaker explored how we make choices, so I made a meal with a base of blandly cooked colorless foods (poached cod fillets, white rice, vanilla ice cream, etc.)but I surrounded the platters with a platoon of unlabeled squeeze bottles filled with colorful sauces. Everyone had to figure out what might go with what and how they wanted to liven up their plates. 

Often it seems if I served umami laden mushrooms and chocolate instead of working to come up with a clever unique menu, I'd hit the nail on the head. So many of the talks delve into the earthy, savory and oft times consciousness bending quests we pursue here on Earth. So too was this true for this months pst when Lex Pelger gave a talk called The Future of Fornication: Open Love in the Drop-out Generation. Lex is a writer, a scientist and an active member of NYC’s Open Love Tribe. In his talk he outlined how the internet had opened possibilities for connecting with all sorts of fetishistic and alternative sexual communities and then he went on to imagine what new possibilities will open with google glasses. In his dream the glasses will work to connect us with like-minded sexual partners whom we chance upon in the crowded hustle-n-bustle of daily life. The more the merrier! 

Lex and I batted around the idea of oysters and chocolate- alleged aphrodisiacs, but in the end we chuckled over an image of people alone in front of their screens eating straight from take-out containers as they carried on cyber-trysts across the globe. I marched off to Chinatown and bought a bale of pre-folded take-out containers and a gross of chopsticks, then home-cooked dishes most of us call our local "Chinese" to deliver: fried rice, garlic eggplant, stir-fried beef with ginger and scallions, stir-fried bok choy...  and for dessert: orange slices and a giant Valentine full of chocolates.    

 

poetry soup

A few Sundays ago I hosted what I hope will be a monthly event from here forward-- a pot-luck gathering of friends and friends of friends for an evening of sharing poems. Its a simple idea- one that you too can try at home- which is why I'm posting this- to encourage you! Try this.
The host makes a pot of soup, the guests bring a dish that goes with soup and a poEm to share.

Minestrone: one pot with chicken stock, one pot with vegetable stock.
Stir pesto and grated cheese into your own bowlful.

I can barely find words to describe how inordinately happy to be participating everyone was. To eat rich soup and homemade bread. To sit in a circle and read and be read to.  The whole becomes greater than the parts.

One ridiculously thrilling moment was when Mahmound recited two
Tony Hoagland poems right out of his head. Imagine: all those things and numbers and worries and tales- and still having room for a string of someone else's words. And I'd never heard of Mr. Hoagland before and now he's a new favorite poet. We had a sprinkling of ancients, a bit of Yeats, Baudelaire in French, rhyming couplets, and a local original. And then we had the delicious Lemon Ricotta cookies Sue's brought to share.  Next scheduled poetry soup is for Feb. 24. 6:00pm.

Is it beautiful? Is it delicious? Is it art?

"Survival of the Beautiful"
this month at pst: 

musician, philosopher and author David Rothenberg presented ideas on the purpose, or lack thereof, of beauty in Nature. Why, he wonders, beyond Darwin's theories on sexual attraction do bowerbirds make such elaborately 'artistic' nests and more importantly, how, through our own art practices can we create a dialogue that includes Nature?

It seemed logical to approach the food through the vast subjective lens of beauty. I imagined the table groaning under heaping platters of ornately garnished, brightly colored smorgasbord, each open-faced selection evoking the beauty of feathers, fishes and petals (although I suppose this is mimicry rather than dialogue.) Next I imagined casseroles of molten caramelized cheesy things, BBQ burnt ends, and slathered buttercream (ahh, excess! Hardly beautiful yet so appealing.) Then one evening gainfully forming Simona's Sardinian gnocchetti it struck me pasta was a perfect illustration for David's talk. There are hundreds of shapes and while certain architecture better holds sauce or stands up to baking over boiling, the primary evolutionary reason for all these shapes is pure ingenious fancy.

cavatelli with pesto

pappardelle with Bolognese 

kasha varniskas with sauteed mushrooms

By my aesthetics not one of these dishes is beautiful though all were delicious and each added to the conceptual illustration of the point. I countered their aesthetic lack with a root vegetable salad whose beautiful colors glorified nature, though the roots were not, as the pasta was, art.

carrots, white and green daikon, watermelon radishes, golden
 and chiogga beets...  this snapshot does no justice!

On either side of these selections I served bread, which has a million shapes and ingredient nuances, and cookies, which has a zillion more. Both the menu and the pst talk grappled but did not resolve fundamental questions. Is natural beauty and handmade beauty apples and oranges? Is deliciousness beautiful? And what has this to do with art?  (Maybe the art of a dish comes from thoughtful arrangement and maybe art’s relation to beauty is only tangential.)

Most often beauty is akin to sight, sound and ideas, (senses centered in the head.) Less often beauty is related to taste and touch (the body.) We seldom say something feels beautiful on our skin, though we might say it feels delicious. Nor do we describe a complex flavor as tasting beautiful, though we would say freshly harvested dew-drenched fraises des bois are exquisite. 

My friend Simona recently posted an article in which she discussed the relationship of "suchness" a word that describes a Zen ideal of essence or true nature, and food. She was commenting on the beauty of ‘pure’ and ‘natural’ flavors, how you can taste something and find its richness more clearly when it is uncluttered, unfettered, unadorned. I on the other hand find ‘the complex’ and ‘the relational’ (and maybe when it come to food- ‘the fat’) more richly engaging. I find beauty in surrounding narratives rather than in things. 

Contemporary high-end food with its dishes of foraged lichens and sonicated emulsions creates an aesthetic that confuses my thoughts. (BTW- notice how fancy restaurants like high-culture museums primarily features the work of white men.)  Though I’ve yet to eat in one of these Temples of Haute ($$$) Cuisine I’ve sampled examples at seminars and workshops. From these tastes and by looking at many beautifully photographed dishes I find myself impressed by their intricacy but seldom is my appetite whetted. 

Sweetbreads, truffles, and wild mushrooms by Chef David Toutain
from a recent dinner at Atera. The photo was snapped by
Anne Engammare McBride and I snitched it from her facebook page.  

On the other hand this homely pot of Bolognese excites my appetite and engages my imagination as I think of stories from home kitchens. The image as is the sauce is far from beautiful and yet to my stomach it is. 

charged food

I wasn't able to be at the last pst because it was the same day as Feast! (the poetry reading I curated) but I did the cooking and dropped of the meal for a talk called "The Chaos of Lust: Sex and Altered States of Consciousness" which was presented by a clinical psychologist/sex therapist and her massage therapist/painter partner. Catch words from their talks' description: chaos theory, extension of ego boundary and ecstatic bliss.  I realize my first thoughts emailed to the speakers ran to cliches- phallic shapes, drippy finger food and doughnuts, but the response back raised my hackles... "It doesn't matter what you cook," he said, "just how horny you are while cooking it."  Uggh. I know he meant make it Like Water for Chocolate by investing the food with charged yoni energy, but it offended me. I have no desire for public exposure (or am I defensively hiding my single, dateless state?)

Its easy to equate food and sex; both are essential experiences that are nice to share but are ultimately privately embodied experiences. Attraction sparks longing and desire (never sure what's the difference... longing seems tied to nostalgia and exists in the head whereas desire seems bodily?) Either way- food is an object of attraction. Do we flirt with food? We certainly experience infatuations and obsessions (negative?) and have passions (positive?) Hmm- does food flirt with us? I have certainly been catcalled by Malliard reactions, ripe fruit, and un-gendered melted cheese.

What I came to was a menu that intended or not must have revealed something about my visceral relationship with food stuffs. A vaguely embarrassing Asian-esqe menu (based on deep-seated Orientalism and a desire to consume an eroticized exotic other?) that combined silky textures with alluring salty sweet flavors. There was nothing hot-- no intensely spiced challenging offers. I suppose, in this instance at least, I went for comfort and pleasure without the enticement of pain.

Finger slurping sticky-sweet slow-roasted wings,
Miso bathed umami-rich melt-in-your-mouth eggplant,
Jade rice with hidden treasures,
Steamed Kobocha infused with sake and soy,
Meaty sweet Medjools and fleshy dried papaya that needed gnawing,
torn apart pomegranates,
Chocolate pudding with whipped cream.

Feast!

Feast! is an annual fundraiser for a local soup kitchen sponsored by Brooklyn Reading Works, a monthly reading series organized by Louise Crawford at The Old Stone House in Park Slope, Bklyn.

We had a feast at Feast! Wine and cider, salami and cheese,
home-baked cookies, oranges and pistachios

Over the years I've gotten to read at Feast! which is always writing about food and this year I curated the event gathering a wonderful line-up of women sharing poems, essays, and songs.

* Molly O'Neill, author, teacher and leader of the on-line food community Cook-n-scribble  cooknscribble.com  read from her book Mostly True: A Memoir of Family, Food and Baseball. 

* Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan, founding editor of the wildly popular blog The Kitchn thekitchn.com read among other things an amazingly evocative section from Little House on the Prairie about making fresh churned butter.

* Chef Rossi of The Raging Skillet theragingskillet.com read a riotous segment from an as yet unpublished (but should be!) memoir called The Devil and Mrs. Goldstein about the Passover seders her family shared as they traveled around the country in an RV (easier to kosher than a house kitchen!)

* Pioneering restauranteur, author and teacher Zarela Martinez zarela.com shared segments from an unpublished memoir, and thrilled us with a Spanish>English translation of a popular Mexican children's poem depicting a Mexican Candyland

* Lyricist Sarah Safford serenaded on her fluke (a baritone ukulele) sharing original songs- many written for communaltable events www.communaltable.blogspot.com  During her last song she was accompanied by fiddler Rebecca Aidlen of the Angel Jam Band and singer Mara Goodman, who sang an old Yiddish folk-song about oranges and pistachios.

* Me. My work tries to capture how food gets woven into everyday life. Here's one of the poems I read:

Where is my mother

in all that clutter

inside her brain?

Is she fretting about the child

she sees reflected

in her mirror on the wall

who is standing on a ledge

on the building across the street?

Has she bumped into

a conversation from1940

she sees fit to convey

but cannot grab hold of

before another thought

bumps her to another thought

and then another?

Last week she would not

look me in the eye,

so busy was she

drifting.

Her caretaker humors, hums, shrugs, 

her husband reads the paper.

Days are long when there is no landing

or maybe they are short.

“Mama,” I whisper,

“I’ve brought lunch

and homemade pickles“

and I wave the garlicky gherkin

as if it were a wand undoing a spell.

It’s scent calls my mother home.

It is a puzzle what to cook;

the distance from plate to mouth

grows each visit.

What is forkable,

nestles well in a spoon,

is graspable with uncontrollable tremors?

I cook what she can lift,

then pierce the pieces on her plate

and hand her the fork,

and now sometimes

she lets me skip that step

and guide the fork directly.

It reminds me of feeding my babies.

How with manic efficiency

I shoveled towering forkfuls

into tender mouths,

or earlier, tapped impatiently

through languorous tibbling.

An earlier memory still;

I am in my father’s lap,

his knee-tapping turns horseback riding game,

his voice hums Bonanza. 

Sitting in morning meditation

my mind in constant motion

flits about seeking stillness,

dances and prances

bumping into unexpected thoughts.

All I need do is open my eyes

and I am here. Here now

I reach across the table

and wipe my mother’s mouth.

Who is this woman

who lets me feed her

but will not look me in the eye

or find words to greet me

and say my name?

I fork a radish to her mouth,

pink, and tender from grilling,

peppery and sweet,

and she opens her eyes and looks at me.

Delicious’” she says

as if picking-up a thread,

“my mother used to make these.”

So here we are:

lost and found,

pushing against             

hallucinations,

narcotics,

palsy.

I want to run

from this despair,

from this stranger woman

and then as if to curb my thoughts

and remind me she’s still my mother,

my mother orients herself 

and finds a beacon

and sometimes it is me

who has brought the light

on a plate of lunch.