* * * * *
Mole is a Concoction.
You can put a lot of things in mole.
Almonds, toasted & ground up with tomatoes.
Chocolate, melting at the end of everything.
Tomato & ginger, reduced as a dream I'm remembering.
Shallots or Sweet Onions or Feral Onions.
It's like a heart buried in the ground in winter.
A Duck in the oven.
A brick of tofu.
A hearty slice of brioche, its light crust dusted with large crystals of sugar.
Chocolate, smooth between the tooths.
Almonds, blanched & toasted in a cast iron pot.
I used to want a poem to speak of its poetics.
Goat meat. Pork belly. White chocolate.
Cloves, Cinnamon, Tumeric, Garlic, Coriander.
The g-dd-ss of spices has given you a tongue.
The g-dd-ss of spices has given you a tooth to your tongue.
Volcanic ash, the wheel reinventing itself turning wheel against wheel.
I wouldn't put a candle in mole.
I would put a fried plantain, sliced w/ farmer's cheese, in mole.
Even when I'm not in crisis, cooking is still necessary.
In this way, I might pull a rabbit out of a mole.
Toasted almonds or toasted pine nuts.
Red Chile powder.
Hot oil. Maple sugar. Snake skin boots I took off by the sea.
When was cooking not fusion?
I would not put a silver dollar in mole, but
I would put a secret in mole.
I will tell you the secret because once you crocheted a cloud into rain.
The secret is smoked salt and something else.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Bean Soup
According to my acupuncturist, it’s a good time for me to be eating lots of soups and stewed dishes; I am, says she, the victim of my own body’s “damp heat,” which means that the functionings of my Stomach and my Spleen (the Chinese versions) have been compromised. As a result of this unfortunate state of affairs, I’ve been told to reduce and/or cut out of my diet most of my most favorite foods, including sugar, alcohol, wheat, fatty cuts of meat, chocolate, tomatoes, dairy, and also anything fried to culinary perfection in grease, on the grounds that such foods are difficult to digest. DRAG. However, soups and other slow cooked foods are relatively easy to digest, so they are, thankfully, supposed to be good for me to eat
The Broth: This month I had grand plans that involved making a broth out of hickory wood chips and herbs, but, concerned as I was about using sprayed or treated wood for my broth, I had a hard time finding the woodchips I needed. I did call a couple of hardware shops to ask if they had hickory wood chips and, if yes, whether or not they were sprayed. These hardware shop people who I spoke to on the phone about my plans to cook w/ the woodchips were of two minds: one of the minds I encountered was a bored, underpaid, teenage pothead type who kept saying “huh?”; the other was a old-time Libertarian, burger-gut type who kept calling his worker friends over to listen to my request. After both of the minds indicated clearly that they thought me crazy, I decided to not contact any more minds. So instead of hickory, I resorted to kelp.
Dried kelp, as it turns out, when cooked with beans (I used Great Northerns in this case) has the property of making beans especially tender. Also, cooking kelp mediates its hyper-salty flavor and the cooked pieces end up being a nice, slightly chewy addition—almost like egg noodles-- to a soup. In addition to the kelp broth, I added garlic, leeks, dried sage, and a few sprigs of fresh thyme to the beans while they cooked.
Tender Beans
The beans in that are the cushions leaking whitely into the onions which are ordered as. Handsome, the white bells. The hams are, what they are, pink commas floating or laying down like hats. In pieces. A leek has a wrist and a cousin is the leek split and swimming. More green and less quilting.
WINTER SQUASH
Is ordered into letters on a flat black pond which is the semblance of cast iron pond. And the blondes lay there in oils, sunning and cooling. All this is below the olive trees. The salt on the rims of the girls in the sun. The sight of a simple point. All to be collected and turned into message.
The movement of a collection deglazed into the pot where the beans sleep like a thieves, anxiety of sleep. This is whisper-time in the field.
There is several times goes by.
Salt is the color of itself. Is the black pepper color. Isn’t.
A TABLE
A rollered planet. Here are the tinseled jewels that take a mouth. This one has noise and a flame colored flame that climbs face, which makes a feeling, which makes a pleasant O of itself. A bracelet speaking around a gram of an oat colored wrist.
* * *
Which is to say that Jack and I enjoyed a Winter Squash, Ham, and White Bean Soup in a Kelp Broth, and that the soup was much enhanced by several hours of cooking. Along with the soup, I served an unfortunate choice of “breads”: spoon bread. Never having made or had spoon bread before, I did not realize that spoon bread is basically hot, liquid (uncooked) cornbread and that, as it is also what farmer feed pigs in sub-zero temperatures, it is not really ever a good idea to put it on a table in front of people you care about and/or are trying to impress. I hope to do better w/ bread next time.
The Broth: This month I had grand plans that involved making a broth out of hickory wood chips and herbs, but, concerned as I was about using sprayed or treated wood for my broth, I had a hard time finding the woodchips I needed. I did call a couple of hardware shops to ask if they had hickory wood chips and, if yes, whether or not they were sprayed. These hardware shop people who I spoke to on the phone about my plans to cook w/ the woodchips were of two minds: one of the minds I encountered was a bored, underpaid, teenage pothead type who kept saying “huh?”; the other was a old-time Libertarian, burger-gut type who kept calling his worker friends over to listen to my request. After both of the minds indicated clearly that they thought me crazy, I decided to not contact any more minds. So instead of hickory, I resorted to kelp.
Dried kelp, as it turns out, when cooked with beans (I used Great Northerns in this case) has the property of making beans especially tender. Also, cooking kelp mediates its hyper-salty flavor and the cooked pieces end up being a nice, slightly chewy addition—almost like egg noodles-- to a soup. In addition to the kelp broth, I added garlic, leeks, dried sage, and a few sprigs of fresh thyme to the beans while they cooked.
Tender Beans
The beans in that are the cushions leaking whitely into the onions which are ordered as. Handsome, the white bells. The hams are, what they are, pink commas floating or laying down like hats. In pieces. A leek has a wrist and a cousin is the leek split and swimming. More green and less quilting.
WINTER SQUASH
Is ordered into letters on a flat black pond which is the semblance of cast iron pond. And the blondes lay there in oils, sunning and cooling. All this is below the olive trees. The salt on the rims of the girls in the sun. The sight of a simple point. All to be collected and turned into message.
The movement of a collection deglazed into the pot where the beans sleep like a thieves, anxiety of sleep. This is whisper-time in the field.
There is several times goes by.
Salt is the color of itself. Is the black pepper color. Isn’t.
A TABLE
A rollered planet. Here are the tinseled jewels that take a mouth. This one has noise and a flame colored flame that climbs face, which makes a feeling, which makes a pleasant O of itself. A bracelet speaking around a gram of an oat colored wrist.
* * *
Which is to say that Jack and I enjoyed a Winter Squash, Ham, and White Bean Soup in a Kelp Broth, and that the soup was much enhanced by several hours of cooking. Along with the soup, I served an unfortunate choice of “breads”: spoon bread. Never having made or had spoon bread before, I did not realize that spoon bread is basically hot, liquid (uncooked) cornbread and that, as it is also what farmer feed pigs in sub-zero temperatures, it is not really ever a good idea to put it on a table in front of people you care about and/or are trying to impress. I hope to do better w/ bread next time.
Posole
Just after I dry off from a shower, I spray a little vanilla perfume on my chest and neck. After I get dressed, I spray my clothing once more. Later in the day, I spray again, hair, wrists, neck. This might be a bit excessive, I know, but it's quite pleasant to walk around smelling like a cookie. Also, adding scent in layers at different times seems to infuse time with a depth of bodily presence. Different notes of the perfume emanate in various tones, rippling at multiple paces like stones of various sizes tossed into a calm lake. Vanilla, like lavender, gives me calm, provides a boundary of scent around me, not like a wall, but like a sweet concentricity.
The nature of existence is that it doesn't hit you all at once. People too ought to be like this, and wines too, and food. Subtle, in layers, in time.
Switch your brain over to oregano, will you? Imagine too cumin. I'm making posole. Don't eat that red chile pod all at once. Such as: The same tactic / layering scent as taste / as spice through time / in the composition of the soup / holds true for the body / the soup holds true/ food as for my own self. In other words,
I start with the corn, soak them with a few oregano leaves. Here they taste like dry lime, a seaboard, a washing of the desert, some petrichor, a coral reef dried up, a matate dry and licked. I soak the corn and then I put it on the stove to simmer.
An hour or so later, I start the pork, cover it with water, turn on another burner. And I add: an onion cut in half studded with cloves, a pinch of oregano, a pinch of cumin seeds, fresh thyme (I don't bother taking the leaves off the stems) whole garlic cloves, ten black pepper corns and a crushed red chile pod, without its seeds. All of this is inedible, smells like water, needs time. The oregano is just plant material in water, making tea.
When the pork is shreddable and edible, it's time to strike up the sautee pan. Chopped onion, celery, and more garlic get transluscent in the slow heating olive oil. Then I add oregano and cumin seeds, ground up this time in a little mortar & pestle. It's fresh, and scented, and hunger arises around me like a perfume. I strain the broth into the hominy which has popped open, mealy and dense like a geode in sandstone. Then I add the spiced up onion/celery/garlic mix, then the shredded pork.
Finally, the red chile sauce. I use a powder now, I've got some mean stuff from Dixon, NM. I roast it in a dry pan with guess what...oregano & cumin, and some marjoram for good measure. Add salt; it all starts to turn from the color of an indian paintbrush to a dark hot crimson, and the piquancy threatens the air. Like I'm making a roux, I add a little fat (olive oil) and then some broth from the soup, stir with a wooden spoon, and it turns to velvet in the pan, softening and bubbling up. Add more broth and stir some more. The oregano is part of the red chile now, and the cumin helps give it a toasty depth; both bring down the acidic nightshade into a real hot palate, love, don't give me chocolate for valentine's day, make me red chile and serve it to me on a hot corn tortilla. But this red chile is for the soup, and I stir a few spoonfuls in and the whole soup comes together.
All those layers of spice at different levels of cooking and different combination cannot be reduced to one step, one spray. Soup, like the self in a day, is all about time. I let the flavors simmer together for another hour or so. Then we sit down to eat, adding fresh cilantro and sour cream and lime to our bowls. Hot tortillas instead of bread: more corn, more love, it's always New Mexico in my heart, it's always Christmas with posole.
p.s. Much of this recipe comes from With a Measure of Grace a wonderful cookbook by Blake Spalding and Jennifer Castle. I do recommend checking it out for a more straight-forward how-to.
The nature of existence is that it doesn't hit you all at once. People too ought to be like this, and wines too, and food. Subtle, in layers, in time.
Switch your brain over to oregano, will you? Imagine too cumin. I'm making posole. Don't eat that red chile pod all at once. Such as: The same tactic / layering scent as taste / as spice through time / in the composition of the soup / holds true for the body / the soup holds true/ food as for my own self. In other words,
I start with the corn, soak them with a few oregano leaves. Here they taste like dry lime, a seaboard, a washing of the desert, some petrichor, a coral reef dried up, a matate dry and licked. I soak the corn and then I put it on the stove to simmer.
An hour or so later, I start the pork, cover it with water, turn on another burner. And I add: an onion cut in half studded with cloves, a pinch of oregano, a pinch of cumin seeds, fresh thyme (I don't bother taking the leaves off the stems) whole garlic cloves, ten black pepper corns and a crushed red chile pod, without its seeds. All of this is inedible, smells like water, needs time. The oregano is just plant material in water, making tea.
When the pork is shreddable and edible, it's time to strike up the sautee pan. Chopped onion, celery, and more garlic get transluscent in the slow heating olive oil. Then I add oregano and cumin seeds, ground up this time in a little mortar & pestle. It's fresh, and scented, and hunger arises around me like a perfume. I strain the broth into the hominy which has popped open, mealy and dense like a geode in sandstone. Then I add the spiced up onion/celery/garlic mix, then the shredded pork.
Finally, the red chile sauce. I use a powder now, I've got some mean stuff from Dixon, NM. I roast it in a dry pan with guess what...oregano & cumin, and some marjoram for good measure. Add salt; it all starts to turn from the color of an indian paintbrush to a dark hot crimson, and the piquancy threatens the air. Like I'm making a roux, I add a little fat (olive oil) and then some broth from the soup, stir with a wooden spoon, and it turns to velvet in the pan, softening and bubbling up. Add more broth and stir some more. The oregano is part of the red chile now, and the cumin helps give it a toasty depth; both bring down the acidic nightshade into a real hot palate, love, don't give me chocolate for valentine's day, make me red chile and serve it to me on a hot corn tortilla. But this red chile is for the soup, and I stir a few spoonfuls in and the whole soup comes together.
All those layers of spice at different levels of cooking and different combination cannot be reduced to one step, one spray. Soup, like the self in a day, is all about time. I let the flavors simmer together for another hour or so. Then we sit down to eat, adding fresh cilantro and sour cream and lime to our bowls. Hot tortillas instead of bread: more corn, more love, it's always New Mexico in my heart, it's always Christmas with posole.
p.s. Much of this recipe comes from With a Measure of Grace a wonderful cookbook by Blake Spalding and Jennifer Castle. I do recommend checking it out for a more straight-forward how-to.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Awoke
The other night/morning, as 2009 melted into 2010, I thought about (duh) the weight of a year and noted also that my celebration of New Year's 2008/2009 ended up being entirely different than my New Year's 2009/2010 celebration. On NY's 2008/2009, Grace and Paul still lived 4 blocks away from me in Missoula, and I spent that last evening of 2008 with them doing what we've always done well together-- eating-- and doing, too, what we've often done a little too well together-- drinking. (As far as Jack goes, back then he and I were still resolving ourselves into some kind of semblance of.)
This New Year's, which, depending on how you tally up your decades, may or may not be the beginning of a new one, saw Grace and Paul (and cat Violet) in Boston, Jack holidaying in Richmond, VT, and me and the cats, Jasper and Hazel--who we cooperatively own between the 4 of us and who live for the moment with Jack and I--in Missoula.
So it goes. The countdown's ended. When it did, I lifted my glass toward the East Coast. Now--cheers, people(!)-- January 2010 resolves itself toward soup and bread.
This New Year's, which, depending on how you tally up your decades, may or may not be the beginning of a new one, saw Grace and Paul (and cat Violet) in Boston, Jack holidaying in Richmond, VT, and me and the cats, Jasper and Hazel--who we cooperatively own between the 4 of us and who live for the moment with Jack and I--in Missoula.
So it goes. The countdown's ended. When it did, I lifted my glass toward the East Coast. Now--cheers, people(!)-- January 2010 resolves itself toward soup and bread.
Monday, December 28, 2009
the year ahead in cooking
paul and i live in cambridge, massachusetts in a garden-level cave cabin near harvard square; i dream about flying and he dreams about giant trout. heather and jack live in missoula, montana in an apartment i am nostalgic about: its balcony under the great pine tree, the kitties skidding around on the pine floor inside. despite the distance, we will continue to cook together. this is our resolution for 2010.
so every month in the year ahead, heather and i, with a little help from our fellows and our friends, will cook a meal which we will share here, in a map made of words and pictures. each month will have a theme, a set of limitations bound seasonally as well as intentionally. each month must also challenge us to cook something new, to go beyond what we have cooked before, to transform what we know. we will also each have the help of the flavor bible by karen page and andrew dornenburg, a cookbook which has no recipes, but is more like a rhyming dictionary for flavor. what is genius without resource?
in the first month, we will make soup and bread. but enough prose. let me hibernate the rest of this december and wake in a new decade.
so every month in the year ahead, heather and i, with a little help from our fellows and our friends, will cook a meal which we will share here, in a map made of words and pictures. each month will have a theme, a set of limitations bound seasonally as well as intentionally. each month must also challenge us to cook something new, to go beyond what we have cooked before, to transform what we know. we will also each have the help of the flavor bible by karen page and andrew dornenburg, a cookbook which has no recipes, but is more like a rhyming dictionary for flavor. what is genius without resource?
in the first month, we will make soup and bread. but enough prose. let me hibernate the rest of this december and wake in a new decade.
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