Assignment: Write about food
A confession: I am an amateur gastronomist.
The label, in such a tangible form, makes me feel rather guilty. I associate gastronomy very strongly with the French, with five-course meals and wine and truffles and foie gras. I live in a cheap one-bedroom in San Diego, have yet to turn twenty-one, will never be able to afford truffles and cannot correctly pronounce foie gras.
You realize my shortcomings.
But when I was ten and my family was visting Oregon, my mother decided she deserved a real vacation, so I cooked dinner. We had salmon caught fresh from the Deschutes and I baked it in the oven and seasoned it to taste and when I served it my family made the appropriate noises of delight. I was hooked; since then I have been interested, and am slowly becoming obsessed, with food, with making and eating the perfect meal. I love having visitors who will let me cook them breakfast, lunch and dinner. I cook on average four nights a week – and I do not mean boil some Ramen or George Foreman a pork chop; I mean I make curried butternut squash soup with ginger, risotto, pappardelle bolognese, or ravioli entirely from scratch – which is, I believe, not bad for a college student.
However despite my affinity for food and cooking, I have always viewed food as a hostile phenomenon; in fact I am afraid of it. This is the main reason I am embarrassed to admit that I am such, in my mother’s words, a foodie. Oftentimes I am afraid to touch food; more frequently I am afraid to consume it. When I handle raw chicken, I wash my hands every five minutes and afterwards attack the countertops with bleach. I wash the shells of eggs before cracking them. I will not eat meat that is even tinged pink and if I am served something that has ingredients in it that I don’t recognize, I take one small bite and then wait for my throat to close when anaphylactic shock sets in. (If it doesn’t, I eat warily, watching the clock; later that night I carefully monitor my body for any signs of illness.) In short, I am a borderline cibophobiac in addition to being a gastronomist. This does not work.
***
For Christmas I want to learn to cook Chinese food, a nod to my heritage as well as aresponse to my frustration at not being able to find any good Chinese food in all of San Diego, so I ask my grandmother to teach me. She takes me to lunch at an excellent buffet, and then we drive to her house and she lays everything out on the counter.
“Okay,” she says. “You do what I tell you.”
Most of it I recognize, but much of it I don’t – the salted turnips in the bright purple package and the brown things that look like chestnuts.
“Peel these,” she says.
“What are they?”
“Water chestnuts. The ones in cans are very bad. I only use fresh.”
She grabs a paring knife and peels one deftly, with four quick motions. “You peel,” she says. I take much longer because I’m afraid to peel toward my own skin, like she did. The skin of the water chestnuts is odd-smelling, almost bitter, or rotten maybe, and I am skeptical.
“They’re good raw,” she says. “Here. You try one.” She takes a small bite of one and hands it to me. “Like apples.”
I am worried about the smell – have they gone bad? Will I be allergic? Will I get sick – but I try it and she’s right; it is sort of like an apple, or maybe an Asian pear. Crisp and very faintly sweet.
“Good,” she says, when I’m done peeling. “Now chop them.” I do, and then she says, “Now chicken.” I cringe as she pulls the plastic off two packages of thighs. Blood drips off one of them and I feel a little faint.
“Wash them first,” she says. “Then cut them. In half. With this,” and suddenly in my hands is the largest cleaver I’ve ever seen in my life. I could chop cement cleanly.
After I have washed the chicken with salt, then washed my hands twice with antibacterial soap, I gingerly set a thigh onto the cutting board and measure it with my eyes. I do not want it to splash on me. I bring down the cleaver firmly onto its back, and the blade barely sinks through the first layer, the skin, and my grandmother laughs at me. Eighty-two years old and eighty-five pounds, she grabs the knife from me and raises it almost above her head before bringing it down so fast and so hard all I see is a flash and then two pieces of chicken, chopped through the bone, lying side-by-side.
“Like that,” she says, and hands me back the cleaver.
Well.
All right.
I hold the knife up as high as she did and hold my breath in case raw chicken particles have been spread into the air, and then thunk bring it down as hard as I can onto the piece of chicken. And when I look I have cut off less than a fourth of it, and my grandmother is rolling her eyes, but when I cut for just a split second I felt the blade slice through skin and then fat and then muscle and then, with a raw thud, the bone, and I understood that this was meat. This was an animal once, a full chicken, with blood and marrow. I am accustomed to buying boneless skinless chicken breasts, which in no way resemble a living chicken at all, and I buy beef sterilized and shrink-wrapped and pork pre-ground, and I do not remember that each is merely one part of a whole. But using all my strength to work through each layer of this chicken I am engaging with it and I know what it is: I am working with life.
I am struggling through this new realization when my grandmother says, “Hurry up! You go too slow,” and so I raise my hatchet and perform my task again and again until there is blood everywhere and my shirt is splattered with juices. When we eat that night everything is delicious.
***
Back at home I want to reexperience food in the same way – to understand it. I find a recipe for chicken m’rozia, a Moroccan dish, and it is something new, something exciting.
The recipe calls for over a pound of onions, so I chop them raw until my eyes are tearing and I feel like they are inside of me, part of me almost, and I can taste them with my skin and for the first time I understand them, their bite and their pungence and almost indiscernible sweetness and I comprehend why they will be sweet in the finished dish, and it is a feeling a little like waiting for a friend I am expecting.
By five-thirty the onions are caramelized, the chicken has been coated in ras al hanout – meaning I’ve touched it raw, which is a step, albeit a small one – and the oven has preheated to 325 degrees. My hands are sticky and oily and so I rinse them, and then I check the onions. They are perfectly browned, having been gently stirred for nearly twenty minutes now, and I add golden raisins and blanched almonds to them and stir a little more, then add honey until everything in the skillet has become a sweet, smooth mass, and I pour it into my glass dish over the chicken that is so patiently waiting and then slip it into the oven. I set my timer.
The chicken bakes for an hour at just over three hundred degrees. Thirty minutes into its braising, the sweet, gently cloying smell of spices has diffused into my kitchen; at forty-five minutes into my living room. I sit watching the clock. I do not want to wait.
When at last the chicken doesn’t resist my toothpick, I pull it out of the oven and breathe in its steam for a moment – heaven – and then spoon a piece onto my plate, smothering it with onions and raisins. When it has cooled I take a bite. The m’rozia is golden and warm and bites into my tongue. It feels comforting and smooth, like a bright summer day, or like eating rich, spicy bites of sunshine.
The label, in such a tangible form, makes me feel rather guilty. I associate gastronomy very strongly with the French, with five-course meals and wine and truffles and foie gras. I live in a cheap one-bedroom in San Diego, have yet to turn twenty-one, will never be able to afford truffles and cannot correctly pronounce foie gras.
You realize my shortcomings.
But when I was ten and my family was visting Oregon, my mother decided she deserved a real vacation, so I cooked dinner. We had salmon caught fresh from the Deschutes and I baked it in the oven and seasoned it to taste and when I served it my family made the appropriate noises of delight. I was hooked; since then I have been interested, and am slowly becoming obsessed, with food, with making and eating the perfect meal. I love having visitors who will let me cook them breakfast, lunch and dinner. I cook on average four nights a week – and I do not mean boil some Ramen or George Foreman a pork chop; I mean I make curried butternut squash soup with ginger, risotto, pappardelle bolognese, or ravioli entirely from scratch – which is, I believe, not bad for a college student.
However despite my affinity for food and cooking, I have always viewed food as a hostile phenomenon; in fact I am afraid of it. This is the main reason I am embarrassed to admit that I am such, in my mother’s words, a foodie. Oftentimes I am afraid to touch food; more frequently I am afraid to consume it. When I handle raw chicken, I wash my hands every five minutes and afterwards attack the countertops with bleach. I wash the shells of eggs before cracking them. I will not eat meat that is even tinged pink and if I am served something that has ingredients in it that I don’t recognize, I take one small bite and then wait for my throat to close when anaphylactic shock sets in. (If it doesn’t, I eat warily, watching the clock; later that night I carefully monitor my body for any signs of illness.) In short, I am a borderline cibophobiac in addition to being a gastronomist. This does not work.
***
For Christmas I want to learn to cook Chinese food, a nod to my heritage as well as aresponse to my frustration at not being able to find any good Chinese food in all of San Diego, so I ask my grandmother to teach me. She takes me to lunch at an excellent buffet, and then we drive to her house and she lays everything out on the counter.
“Okay,” she says. “You do what I tell you.”
Most of it I recognize, but much of it I don’t – the salted turnips in the bright purple package and the brown things that look like chestnuts.
“Peel these,” she says.
“What are they?”
“Water chestnuts. The ones in cans are very bad. I only use fresh.”
She grabs a paring knife and peels one deftly, with four quick motions. “You peel,” she says. I take much longer because I’m afraid to peel toward my own skin, like she did. The skin of the water chestnuts is odd-smelling, almost bitter, or rotten maybe, and I am skeptical.
“They’re good raw,” she says. “Here. You try one.” She takes a small bite of one and hands it to me. “Like apples.”
I am worried about the smell – have they gone bad? Will I be allergic? Will I get sick – but I try it and she’s right; it is sort of like an apple, or maybe an Asian pear. Crisp and very faintly sweet.
“Good,” she says, when I’m done peeling. “Now chop them.” I do, and then she says, “Now chicken.” I cringe as she pulls the plastic off two packages of thighs. Blood drips off one of them and I feel a little faint.
“Wash them first,” she says. “Then cut them. In half. With this,” and suddenly in my hands is the largest cleaver I’ve ever seen in my life. I could chop cement cleanly.
After I have washed the chicken with salt, then washed my hands twice with antibacterial soap, I gingerly set a thigh onto the cutting board and measure it with my eyes. I do not want it to splash on me. I bring down the cleaver firmly onto its back, and the blade barely sinks through the first layer, the skin, and my grandmother laughs at me. Eighty-two years old and eighty-five pounds, she grabs the knife from me and raises it almost above her head before bringing it down so fast and so hard all I see is a flash and then two pieces of chicken, chopped through the bone, lying side-by-side.
“Like that,” she says, and hands me back the cleaver.
Well.
All right.
I hold the knife up as high as she did and hold my breath in case raw chicken particles have been spread into the air, and then thunk bring it down as hard as I can onto the piece of chicken. And when I look I have cut off less than a fourth of it, and my grandmother is rolling her eyes, but when I cut for just a split second I felt the blade slice through skin and then fat and then muscle and then, with a raw thud, the bone, and I understood that this was meat. This was an animal once, a full chicken, with blood and marrow. I am accustomed to buying boneless skinless chicken breasts, which in no way resemble a living chicken at all, and I buy beef sterilized and shrink-wrapped and pork pre-ground, and I do not remember that each is merely one part of a whole. But using all my strength to work through each layer of this chicken I am engaging with it and I know what it is: I am working with life.
I am struggling through this new realization when my grandmother says, “Hurry up! You go too slow,” and so I raise my hatchet and perform my task again and again until there is blood everywhere and my shirt is splattered with juices. When we eat that night everything is delicious.
***
Back at home I want to reexperience food in the same way – to understand it. I find a recipe for chicken m’rozia, a Moroccan dish, and it is something new, something exciting.
The recipe calls for over a pound of onions, so I chop them raw until my eyes are tearing and I feel like they are inside of me, part of me almost, and I can taste them with my skin and for the first time I understand them, their bite and their pungence and almost indiscernible sweetness and I comprehend why they will be sweet in the finished dish, and it is a feeling a little like waiting for a friend I am expecting.
By five-thirty the onions are caramelized, the chicken has been coated in ras al hanout – meaning I’ve touched it raw, which is a step, albeit a small one – and the oven has preheated to 325 degrees. My hands are sticky and oily and so I rinse them, and then I check the onions. They are perfectly browned, having been gently stirred for nearly twenty minutes now, and I add golden raisins and blanched almonds to them and stir a little more, then add honey until everything in the skillet has become a sweet, smooth mass, and I pour it into my glass dish over the chicken that is so patiently waiting and then slip it into the oven. I set my timer.
The chicken bakes for an hour at just over three hundred degrees. Thirty minutes into its braising, the sweet, gently cloying smell of spices has diffused into my kitchen; at forty-five minutes into my living room. I sit watching the clock. I do not want to wait.
When at last the chicken doesn’t resist my toothpick, I pull it out of the oven and breathe in its steam for a moment – heaven – and then spoon a piece onto my plate, smothering it with onions and raisins. When it has cooled I take a bite. The m’rozia is golden and warm and bites into my tongue. It feels comforting and smooth, like a bright summer day, or like eating rich, spicy bites of sunshine.
posted by Kelly at
9:15 PM
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