Edible Memories Day 10: Food and Time

I appreciate anything that forces me to slow down, in body and mind. Most days find me whirling about like a dervish, juggling responsibilities and to-dos and want-to-dos high above my head.

Some of this is my own doing, a helix of innate anxiety and my goal-oriented nature that drives me forward. 
Some is life as an at-home mother with very little help to two extremely energetic young sons, one of whom often demands more than your average bear. 
Some is the nature of living in DC, a city that moves and thinks quickly.

In any case, life. And by and large, I like mine a lot.

But going slo-mo is an always-welcome thing and one reason I love to cook.

I am making a double batch of mujaddara, that hearty, comfort dish from the middle east that combines lentils, rice and onions in a silky way. The rice is steamed, the lentils just the right side of al dente. All that remains is to deal with the small mountain of onions.

I don my onion goggles so as to avoid crying the entire time, and set to work with a paring knife, peeling back each onion’s crackling paper layers. Once inside, I carefully remove the softer but still fibrous inner wrapping. Onion milk begins to tear, cloudy droplets suggesting freshness and pungency. I gave thanks, both for the lovely alliums and, once again, for my goggles; they make me look silly but they work, so who cares?!

Reaching for my chef’s knife, I notice the blade’s glinting edge. Tom’s just sharpened these, I think appreciatively. With almost no effort, I slice each onion in half, place them cut side down on a board, turn them clockwise forty-five degrees and quickly sliver the pile into a jumble of crescent moons.

I notice that my breath has slowed.
I notice that my heart feels at peace.
I notice that my mind no longer races.

In a deep skillet, I place a knob of butter and several tablespoons of beautiful green-tinged olive oil. I set the heat to medium-low and watch as the butter melts into the oil, twirling and dancing into a marbleized canvas.

In go the Cheshire-cat smiles. With one of my beloved wooden spoons, I gently toss the onions until they’re glistening evenly with fat. It’s time to wait, to let the magic happen.

I sit to write and notice that the corners of my mouth have turned up. I notice that my brain feels light, as if it’s given so many thoughts and memories to Dumbledore’s pensieve: Hold these until later, please. Thank you.

My fingers fly and I notice the fragrances surrounding me: frying onions, earthy lentils, Louisiana, which is all I can think of when I smell just-steamed rice.

The onions are melting. I think of the tigers in Little Black Sambo (thankful that one’s been renamed Little Babaji), biting each other’s tails and racing around a tree so quickly and for so long that the dissolve into a pool of perfect butter. My onions are that pool. A gift. Except mine has come from patience and quiet attention, rather than fierce competition.

I bump the heat up to medium and watch as the silky, translucent onions become more richly hued, turning golden, amber, honeyed. The ones on the edges look like mahogany. I think of my colored pencils, ordered by shade and how much I like when they’re neatly arranged.

It’s time now to spare the onions additional heat. After a final flourish of my wooden spoon, I slide the skillet to a cool burner, and lower my face into the aromatic steam that arises from the beautiful mess.

I don’t know how much time has passed since I began cooking. What a delight to lose myself like this.

Edible Memories Day 8: Food and Longing

Even when I eschewed most food, I never stopped wanting it. I could ignore my desire, punch it down, beat it back, disavow it, but behind that curtain, the longing grew. Such is the primal relationship to that which we need.

I see it everywhere. In my insatiable pug who dances around his food bowl with salivating anticipation, who licks it clean for minutes after finishing the last bit of chow. In my ginger cat who nips at my heels when hungry and then seems to relish the glistening mound of pheasant or tumble of kibble I put in his bowl. In even our tank of fish as they race skyward each morning toward the shower of orange flakes –better for their color, see- raining down to water level.

It is in my garden, as the flowers shine their faces toward the sun, as that very reach determines angle of growth all around. As the soaring sugar maple tries to steal all the soil’s nutrients for itself. Year after year, I compost and fertilize on behalf of the smaller plants trying desperately to assert their worth against that tree’s. I see it in the bursts of green shooting from sidewalk cracks and microscopic fractures in the mortar between bricks; life finds a way. It longs to do so and will.

I remember the longing when I think of relationships past.

My high school boyfriend and the fettucine alfredo we cooked for each other one night.

My college love, the first real love of my life, and the way our eyes met over a high top at a bar a year in. There we drank cold pints, played darts and he fashioned me a ring from a foil wrapper, slipping it down my slim finger before kissing my waiting lips and whispering, “I love you, Emil.”

The man in Africa, next to me at the Ethiopian restaurant in Nairobi, where a slinky belly dancer beguiled the room. Frothy Naishos and plates of earthy greens and that spongy injera. We ate with our hands, scooping portions of the sumptuous food between bread and fingers, slipping bits into each other’s mouths, fingers sometimes lingering there, the belly dancer simply background noise then.

I watched it as my newborn sons rooted and suckled, hungrily and then blissfully when the milk came pouring forth. I watched their eyes roll backward before closing; never was there such a picture of heady satiety.

I saw such longing in my three-year-old when he came upon a case of chocolates, plastered his face and hands against it, and began making the big decisions when we said he could have one of whatever he wanted. I saw it too in my toddler as he pressed up against the oven, ogling the puffy muffins cooking within. “Please mama, when ready?”

I smile as I watch my husband’s eyes as I set a plate of his favorite pie or ragù bolognese in front of him. Watch him take a bite, close his eyes, and say “Thank you, honey. This is so good.”

And I think, my god, this thing called eating.

Edible Memories Day 6: Food and Laughter

My hometown, Lake Charles, is about three hours west of New Orleans. It’s an easy drive on I-10, winding travelers across Louisiana’s southern plain and past towns like Butte la Rose, Henderson, Breaux Bridge, Ramah and LaPlace. My sister and I always started to lose it as the interstate signs announced proximity to Butte la Rose- “Butt la Rose” we’d howl, tears of laughter streaming from our eyes.

As you near Baton Rouge, you have the option to pull off for a stop at Coffee Call. It is always wise to do this because there you can get the best beignets and café au lait outside of New Orleans and Café du Monde. If I’m being honest, and not just nostalgiac, Coffee Call has even better beignets than CdM but let’s just call it a draw for now.

Last time I drove from LC to NOLA, I stopped at Coffee Call and in the parking spot next to me was an old car with a giant statue of the Virgin Mary buckled into the back seat. That is SO Louisiana, I thought, with complete love and joie de vivre.

Even with the sweet treat that is Coffee Call, my favorite part of the drive is cruising across the Atchafalaya freeway which stretches eighteen miles across the Atchafalaya Swamp. The Swamp, also but less romantically known as the Atchafalaya Basin, is a muddy convergence of delta and wetland where gators swim, egrets dive, fisherman putter, and Cypresses, both dead and alive, soar, Spanish moss hanging from their boughs. It is possibly the most gorgeous part of Louisiana; it is one of my favorite sights in all the world.

NOLA is one of a kind, and I love it. Part of my spirit resides there, even though I never have. It would be hard to live more freely –in all senses of that word- than many New Orleanians do. There is mystery and local color around every corner, hundreds-years-old Oaks offering their mighty limbs to the sky but also to the earth, suggesting you sit a spell and rest a while. It’s awfully hot, they seem to say. Sit in my shade.

Mardi Gras beads, caught by branches when tossed high from the floats during the parades, hang in trees year round. Porches so deep you can’t believe it front most homes and make perfect meeting points for early evening cocktails. The sidewalks are gauntlets, so cracked and split they’ve been by the trees determined roots.

Everything is slightly askew and in that, slightly perfect.

My family has a Christmas Eve tradition. It’s not a regular one though I often wish it were. Dressed to the nines, we meet my cousins, aunts, uncles and nieces at Galatoire’s for réveillon. Réveillon hails from French tradition and derives from “waking” or staying awake before Christmas Day. It starts at lunchtime, but lunch is a deceptive moniker because what we actually do is meet at 1p for a lunchtime meal that proceeds to last until dinnertime. I don’t know many cities or restaurants that treasure patrons sitting and eating and drinking for six hours. That is New Orleans and réveillon for you.

The waiters are veterans, they wear tuxedos. The main floor of Galatoire's is one enormous room, with big plate-glass windows looking out over Bourbon Street. The ceilings are so many feet high and twirl with fans circling at a languid pace. The walls are papered in a rich green and gold except for the huge five foot mirrors which cover a band running around the room from roughly hip height. The lights sparkle, bourbon milk punches pour like water.

It’s loud inside Galatoire’s, with laughter and convivial conversation reaching decibel levels and staying there. Everyone is happy, festive, full of seasonal and libational spirit. Kids nosh on baguettes as tall as they are, oysters sit nestled in salted ice, as does a perfect mignonette in a tiny silver bowl.

Soufflé potatoes arrive, all golden and puffed. I can never get enough of them. Shrimp remoulade and crabmeat maison vie for my attention and love. I cheat on one with the other, back and forth, on a heady loop.

Oysters Rockefeller look like spinach-topped presents, and taste even better. There are two types of gumbo, made with a roux so chocolatey brown that you can’t see beneath the surface and you don’t care. What’s in there will be divine.

There’s creamed spinach and Brabant potatoes, trout and red drum, sauce meuniére and amandine.

If you can stomach it, black bottomed pecan pie and eggy bread pudding wait to sate your sweet tooth. Chicory coffee can help cut your feelings of fullness.

All the while, you smile and laugh, clink and toast. Someone’s passed out jingle bells on velvet cord, and everyone’s wearing his or her necklace. Coats have long since been shrugged off, ties loosened, lipstick gone.

The lights never dim and when you finally stagger outside the front door, you can’t believe that the sun has bid you adieu.