Confessions of an Ex-Vegetarian

Warning: This blog contains text and images which may not be suitable for vegetarians, or most Americans.

I was a vegetarian for seven years. As a teenager I shunned meat and its insustainablity in reaction to what I considered to be my parents’ bourgeois lifestyle. Like most reactionaries, I took great pride in my heightened consciousness. I took advantage of each opportunity, no matter how small, to point out the perceived social and ecological benefits of my lifestyle choice. I mocked how others lived. When invited to someone’s house for a meal, I refused their unenlightened hospitality with the most enlightened of utterances: I’m a vegetarian.

I was an asshole.

All that changed about ten years ago. My first spring in Argentina, I was invited by Irving, the Peruvian office cleaner I had befriended at work, to spend mother’s day with him and his family. One November Sunday, I took the train heading to the airport and stepped off an hour later in the middle of nowhere. I was greeted by Irving's family and two bicycles, a small one and a slightly less small one. The family of five balanced on the smaller bike with acrobat agility. I teetered alone on the less small one. Local custom dictates that guests have the priveledge of riding unencumbered. They gave me a tour of the town. Finally, they led me to the outskirts where their shantytown began its great expanse to the horizon. We rode down the unpaved streets past the only kiosk, which sold milk and beer, to Irving’s small house, which he had built with the discarded satellite dish crate (he worked in the offices of a telecommunications company). As in most houses in this neighborhood, and the thousands that pepper Gran Buenos Aires, there was no running water. A neighbor had rigged electricity by pinching a cable that led to the town. Lights burned until the electric company disconnected them. But it wouldn’t take long to find another cable to pinch.

I was offered a cola and beer. I accepted with great curiousity. Lunch, I was told, would be ready in about an hour. Irving was preparing chicken, as they often do in his part of Peru. A hole is dug in the ground and lined with hot coals. Potatoes and a whole chicken are added and the hole is covered. An hour or so later, the whole lot is unearthed and served.

Chicken? I choked. Chicken. I could say I was a vegetarian and teach these people a thing or two about social conscientiousness. I could refuse the chicken and just eat the potatoes. (But hadn’t the potatoes been cooked with the chicken?) I could stick with my Coke and beer mixture and say I wasn’t hungry. Analyzing the options, I watched Irving gingerly pull lunch out of his front garden. It became increasingly clear: There was only one option.

The chicken was delicious.

And so, little by little, I reintroduced meat into my diet. The first years I limited myself to accepting meat when invited to dine at others’ homes. In my own kitchen, I kept a strict ban on meat which was only lifted at Thanksgiving.

When we came to Barcelona the ban was lifted for fish. Over the last year and a half I have lifted the ban again and again as I experimented with locally raised chicken and beef in the kitchen.

Spain is surely one of the worst countries in which to be a vegetarian. And if you’re vegan, you may as well not even come here. They do not consider ham to be meat, so it's impossible to know if the waiter’s interpretation of no tiene carne and your interpretation of no tiene carne are the same. Also, the Spanish have a very strange fetish for animal carcasses.

Most American tourists think the local markets are lovely until they reach the butcher’s section.

The butchers’ stalls often look like an animal side show from the exhibition Bodies. Small, firm rabbit carcasses laid out over cuts of meat, their floppy ears and cute little noses skinned and shiny pink. A suckling pig, creamy white and dull eyed looking over the counter, right at you. Many butchers sell cuts of suckling pig, with the head resting on top for decoration.

In most bars and local restaurant, a ham fetish is on full display. Pig legs – from the thigh to the hoof – often line the walls as the establishment’s only decor or, at the very least, sit upon the bar. Borges once commented that there was something almost sensuous about the way Spaniards treated their ham, comparing it to the pin-ups one might find in a mechanics' garage.

Most tourists find it appalling.

Even the fish here is often mildly offensive to most American visitors. The most common way to serve fish is whole. There was the case of the British-American professor who had to change places with someone at dinner because the person next to him had ordered a whole fish. It keeps looking at me.

The fishmonger will ask how you want it cleaned. Head and guts or just the guts. Just the guts, please.

Fish heads, fish heads.

The other day I served up my first attempt at whole sardines, minus the guts, grilled, on a bed of sautéed fennel and red onion sprinkled with lemon juice and fresh dill.

Rolly, polly fish heads.

By the end of the meal, both Andrés and I had each found a fish eye rolling around on our plate. Of the twelve eyes between us, only eleven could be accounted for. Eat them up, yum!

I have a come a long way since my days as a vegetarian. When I first started cooking with fish and chicken, I did so filled with disgust. I got used to fish quickly enough. But the raw chicken smelled. And it felt funny. I could only handle touching skinless breasts. I wouldn’t go near anything else.

I took a big step last Sunday, when I decided to prepare a whole roast chicken for the inauguration of our new oven. I went to the market on Saturday to purchase the chicken and when I opened the package on Sunday I was reminded of yet another curious thing about meat in Spain.

They sell you the whole chicken. Dead and plucked, but with everything else intact. Luckily, they had cut the claws off this one. But the head, the rump and internal organs were all in place.

I had no idea what to do with it. So I did what any of my 21st century American counterparts would do. I googled.

You can imagine how helpful American websites were. America, the land that has managed to sterilize even meat so that it is inoffensive to American sensibilities. There is no skin, certainly no feathers, no fat, or bone, or blood in those cuts of beef, chicken or pork so carefully placed in their plastic packaging. Meat in American bears no trace of the living animal it once was. If it did, people probably wouldn't eat it.

Cleaning a chicken can seem quite scary or put a knot of disgust into someone’s stomach if they have never cleaned store bought chicken before...Once you’re ready to begin cleaning your chicken be sure your sink is empty, then place the package of chicken in your sink. Start by cutting open the package of meat with either a knife or a pair of scissors. Reach your hand inside the cavity of the bird, pull out the bag containing the giblets and set aside.

That was no help. Though it did prove amusing to read the comments:

"If you put the chicken in the sink you will make your family sick."

"I rinse mine off with hose in the backyard. It’s tough in winter but I’d rather be cold than make my family sick."

Right.

Another link led me to a headline report in the Sun: I was about to tuck into my dinner and found a whole chicken head in there! I demanded compensation of course! The offending chicken head was apparently found in a package of frozen ribs and chicken wings.

Most websites that came up were warnings to anyone who might happen to stumble unawares into a Chinese butcher's. Make sure you have them remove the head and claws before wrapping it up.

But once I tucked into the job of chopping off the head and carefully cutting around its buttocks without cutting into it, I worked on pure instinct and assumption. This must be the esophagus. I yanked at it. That yellowish green sack must be bile or something. I have no idea what the yellow liquid that oozed out when I severed the neck was. I don’t know if I want to know.
I chopped and hacked and got inside that bird to clean it out. I marveled at how the organs were all connected. I identified the heart, lungs and liver. I looked for the gizzard. I couldn’t find it. I wondered how similar this chicken’s organ placement was to my own. I got my hands gooey, full of chicken body fluids, blood and fat.

It was glorious. I had officially become a carnivore.

And the chicken was delicious.

Grilled Sardines over Fennel and Red Onion

6 sardines
2 small red onions, halved and sliced thinly
1 fennel bulb, halved and sliced thinly
2 tablespoons, plus 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
Lemon juice
Fresh dill
Salt and pepper

Season the sardines with salt and pepper to taste. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a medium pan over medium heat. Add the fennel and red onions and sautée, stirring frequently, for 5 minutes. Turn the heat to low and cover and cook 10-12 minutes, until fennel and onions become caramelized.

Empty fennel and red onion mixture into a small bowl. Heat remaining olive oil in the pan over medium-high heat. When just smoking, add sardines. Cook about three minutes on each side, until crisp.

Serve the sardines on a bed of the caramelized fennel and onion.


Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Followed Seth’s mashed potato recipe with the following additions.

Add a bay leaf three peeled cloves of garlic to the potatoes as they boil.

When they’ve finished, drain the water and remove the bay leaf, but leave the garlic and mash it together with the potatoes.

Roast Chicken with Potatoes, Carrots and Onion

Seth has already posted the definitive recipe for roast chicken. This is merely what I added:

1 whole onion, quartered
1/2 fennel bulb
1 lemon, quartered
4 potatoes
2 carrots
1 onion
sage
extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven. Fill the cavity of the bird with the onion, fennel and lemon.

In a bowl toss together the potatoes, carrots and onion with the olive oil and sage. Add salt and pepper to taste. Tuck the raw potato, carrot and onion mixture under the bird in the roasting pan. These will cook in the bird’s juices as it roasts.

Simply Cooking

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about craft. Cooking the simple meal. Writing the sharp, deliberate sentence. Craft is the way we work, a way of doing things.

I taught The Old Man and The Sea this summer. I used the book because Hemingway's ridiculously terse prose is a great way to introduce emerging writers to the idea of craft. The book urges conversation about the technical aspect of writing, the nuts and bolts. It's also a great way to get paid to talk about fishing. Double score.

Say what you want about Hemingway's life but when he wrote, he was tight. His sentences are lean and effective. Like a meal of olive oil, salt and bread, wine. Deceptively simple.

The novel's opening line has it all:

"He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish."

Like this one, great opening lines can be read as microcosms of the entire story to come. The drama and struggle all unfolds in concentric circles rippling outward from it.

In the line above, the reader gets the whole story in one shot, framed in one tiny window. Yet nothing is betrayed--the fight to come, the eventual loss, the lonely walk back up the beach, Santiago's dream of the lions in Africa. For those of us who are familiar with the book, I think these things are what lie hidden behind words like alone, skiff, Gulf Stream, and taking.

There is a brilliance to Old Man's opening line. Perhaps it is in the way Hem says it all, but still keeps things hidden. The essential mystery of the piece is still concealed. Like the faces of people in Rene Magritte's paintings, there is always an element of secrecy. That small kernel of truth buried at the core remains unknowable. His craft is in how he lays all of that down in so few words.

Like Hemingway, Magritte's work is full of concealed faces and objects.

But it all translates in the kitchen as well. Cooking and writing share so many natural commonalities. That's why we write this blog. That's maybe why many of you like to read it. You. Us. We know these things. It's our little inside joke. It's the reason why some of our favorite books are always cookbooks.

To me, great cooking and great writing share a common minimalism, an economy of resources. I like both best when they are unadorned, laid bare to their essential elements. Efficient. Penetrative, to the heart. Crisp and clean, like a blade. High and tight, like Derek Jeter's haircut.

But just like a great opening line of a novel, the first course of a meal can also be a microcosm. It might capture the essence of the entire meal to come. It might tantalize. If the art of seduction is the ability to both reveal and obscure at the same time, then let that be the first course.

Take my typical Friday night meal: fresh bread, roast chicken, green vegetables, potatoes, garlic, olive oil, water, red wine. I think it may be the perfect meal. It is also the simplest.

Chicken soup is the necessary first course for this meal. It needs to be. Every ingredient in the soup is something that will be served again, but in a different form later on: meat, vegetables, potatoes, spice, water, salt, warmth. When stared deeply into from above, the best chicken soups auger the meal to come. This soup must be eaten carefully.

For six years my wife has come up with hundreds of variations of these same simple ingredients every week to near perfection. The only variables are vegetables, maybe some fish here and there. Usually salmon. Maybe herring. But the main components of the meal are the same every time.

She calls me at work. She says: What should I make for dinner?

I go: It's cold outside. Can you make a chicken soup? Do we have time to make challah? Should I make garlic when I get home?

She says: What do you think?

Then: Love you. Bye.

I believe her. Hanging up, I sometimes pause, say a quick word of thanks. I have to remember to do that more. One word prayers are sometimes the most effective.

Before she hangs up I hear the shrill, hysterical voices of children in the background.

I think to myself: Please, just let there be soup.

She never has time to make the meal. Yet every week about an hour after sundown, the meal doesn't so much come out of the kitchen as emerge. It wafts out. I smell it coming before it arrives. (This happens even in early December, when the sun sets at 4:15 pm.)

If I ask her how she had the time to make such a meal, she is aloof and evasive.

I demand to know. I again ask how she did it.

She smiles and turns around, walks into the kitchen.

She's all: I don't know. I just somehow did.

Voice lilting as she speaks: I even had to hold the baby in one arm all day. He was crying. I cooked with the other. And did the bills.

Some people are secretive about their craft.

I stand amazed, but suspicious. She even went to the store for the wine? It simply can't be. I begin to snoop around the kitchen. I lift pot lids to sniff inside. I inspect things. From the corner of my eye I watch what she does with her hands.

She says: Get out.

Later on, the meal is a smashing success. She tells me not to drink all of the wine. Soon some reading, then bed.

***

Cooking with simplicity is less of an art and more of a mastery of the basic elements of what can satiate the body and soul. How to really make a meal. All great cooks have this. Some people just have an intuition of what ingredients will truly work in a dish or a meal. In the greatest ones, it's an innate alchemy. It's a knowledge of how to mix the best spices or how to invite the right guests. It's like Remy in Ratatouille.

The best cooks know how to make a meal out of the simplest ingredients.

When shopping at the market, the bread we buy should have no more than four or five ingredients. Anything more is asinine. As for preservatives, most of us live in areas where we have twenty-four hour, seven-day a week access to fresh produce, meat, or fish. Therefore to buy anything containing preservatives is ludicrous, offensive. There is no need whatsoever. The same goes for food dyes. Absolutely preposterous.

***

I think all of this may come from a desire of mine to have everything boiled down to its basic elements. To simplify. To find the grand unifying theory. Hashem Echad: God is One

I think I need that. I need to know that truth is always simple yet everywhere and unadorned. It's ubiquitous. It's as uncomplicated as a single line of prose.

In his poem The First Words, Seamus Heaney writes:

My only drink is meaning from the deep brain,

What the birds and the grass and the stones drink.

Let everything flow

Up to the four elements,

Up to water and Earth and fire and air.

Isn't that so tight? But I love that- the final dissolution of all things into their basic elements. It makes so much sense to me.

It's is as simple as the way a meal is reduced to bones on a plate and half-conversations lingering in the air. It's the way salt dissolves in warm water when stirred, giving itself over so utterly and completely. It's the way some things vanish into the air when they need to. Just like that.

***

Chilled Peach Soup

It's peach season now on the east coast. Baskets full of peaches line local farmer's market. Often, though, you buy a basket and some peaches are just too ripe. A soup is a great way to use the overripened, bruised, but still ridiculously sweet peaches. Seth originally published this recipe here.

6 large ripe peaches
2 cups water
1 cup apple juice
1/4 cup honey
Zest and juice of 1 lime
Salt and pepper to taste
Mint sprigs

Bring a medium pot of water to a boil. Cut a small "X" through the bottom of each peach, then drop them into the water to blanch for 20 seconds. Using a slotted spoon, transfer peaches to a bowl of ice water. When peaches are cooled, drain well then peel them, starting from the "X" at the bottom of each peach. Discard skin and pits and transfer peaches to a blender.

Add water, apple juice, honey, lime zest and juice, salt and pepper and blend until smooth. Transfer to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until well chilled, about 2 hours.

Pour soup into bowls or cups, garnish with mint and serve.

Potato, Light of my Life, Fire of my Loins

Potato, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my dinner. Po-ta-to: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Po. Ta. To.

***

Ladies and gentleman of the jury! I've endured a brutish affection for Potato for nearly four years. Before I succumbed to her alluring spell I rarely palpated her flesh or sunk my teeth into her ethereal hollows.

Recently, though, my affection (affliction) has threatened to take over my life.

In fall and winter, sometimes far into spring, I balance my Potato affection with a healthful Sweet Potato romp. Lately, though, my preferred Sweet, Jewel, has been conspicuously absent from the grocer's bin. Let me say, the other "Sweet" the Garnet, is a sham--impossible to cook, finicky, and dry. Jewel works: she cooks to a creamy texture. Garnet, for some reason, shams: she hardly ever achieves a suitable texture.

Perhaps it's a storage problem. Sweets are typically "cured" after harvesting, then stored for months. In On Food and Cooking, Harold Magee notes: "True to their subtropical heritage, sweet potatoes store best at 55-60 F. Chilling can contribute to 'hardcore' a condition in which the root center remains hard even when cooked."

I hope you don't refrigerate your Sweet, or your Potato.

Magee also notes: "At colder temperatures their [potatoes] metabolism shifts in a complicated way that results in the breakdown of some starch to sugars."

I hope, too, you don't buy Sweets or Potatoes from a grocer that refrigerates, lest he ruin the supple quality of your perfect little jewel.

Unfortunately, Someone's been ruining my Garnet. I've tested her from Asheville, North Carolina to Philadelphia: without a doubt, she refuses to cook perfectly.

***

Perfection is a courageous cook's goal, even if it's an unreasonable, unattainable goal. But unreasonable behavior might just be the touchstone of the best cooks; after all, the passion generated by the unreasonable pursuit of perfection usually inspires a fabulous meal.

I'm talking about the pursuit of perfect ingredients; an extreme attentiveness to cooking; and an even more extreme attentiveness to the food itself: its finicky needs, its demands.

I honestly feel in the bottom of my heart that this is a human being's most frankly honorable pursuit: the adamant pursuit of cooking perfection. It's impossible, of course. But the trying, the very trying, is what matters: you cook for others, after all, and your effort is your honor: the honor you feel and the deep, humble honor you bestow upon others.

All you have to do is try, really hard.

***

The potato's needs are often underestimated by the home cook. The obvious example is the typical mashed potato: watery and lacking true potato flavor, this dish often tastes acutely of butter and salt; one mere taste is an indication of the cook's lack of effort.

Perfect mashed potatoes require pain.

First, the potatoes (Yukon Gold or Russets are best) are simmered (not boiled!) whole.

The potatoes are then peeled after simmering, while still relatively hot, and mashed.

This is a simple, but lengthy and pain-staking method, sure to burn your fingers. And yet, the burn is a symbol of love--love for the potato; love for the family and friends you are cooking for. When you serve the perfect mashed potato your guests feel that love with each ethereal bit.

The courageous cook will hurt themselves simply to offer love. The courageous cook's mashed potatoes say: I adore you. I want to please you. I am Humbert, you are Lolita!

The lazy cook's mashed potatoes say: I hardly care about you. Please eat this butter and salt-laden dish so you might die quicker. I am Humbert, you are Charlotte, Lolita's pestering Mother.

The lovable geeks at Cook's Illustrated put it this way:

"Peeling and cutting before simmering increases the surface area of the potatoes, through which they lose soluble substances such as starch, proteins, and flavor compounds, to the cooking water. The greater surface area also enables lots of water molecules to bind with the potatoes' starch molecules. Combine these two effects and you've got bland, thin, watery mashed potatoes."

Perfect mashed potatoes should taste like potatoes, ethereal, earthy, merely accented by other flavors like butter and salt, not dominated by those flavors. This is the fey grace, the elusive shifty, soul-shattering, insidious charm that separates the perfect mashed potato from the boring ineptitude of the careless, fatty, salty mushed spud.


Roasted potatoes offer a different texture, a new challenge. The perfect roast potato offers a crisp, crunchy outside and a moist, creamy flesh. Lazy potatoes merely tossed with oil and roasted in the oven rarely achieve this sort of perfection. Lazy potatoes are usually moist throughout, but offer no textual variation, and are often too soft, sometimes mushy.

Harold Magee offers the simple solution:

"If preheated to 130-140 degrees...[potatoes] develop a persistent firmness that survives prolonged final cooking. This can be valuable for...potatoes whose outer-regions are inevitably over-softened and may begin to disintegrate while the centers cook through."

Magee is talking specifically here of boiled potatoes for potato salad, but the same principle holds for roasted potatoes: pre-cooking, or par-boiling, potatoes ensures a crispy exterior.

The geeks at Cook's Illustrated agree:

"Parboiling...produced a potato closer to our idea..."

Unfortunately, the geeks go on to say: "...but preparation required considerable attention owing to the additional step."

This, from the same cookbook authors who urge you to brine your birds, who boast of having made 38 different versions of crème caramel to find "the absolute best version."

Bullshit!

The perfect roast potato begins in a pot of cold water. You bring it to a slow simmer and you let it be for five minutes. The whole process takes less then ten minutes. You can clip your nails, read a bit, eat a snack, have a smoke--is this "considerable attention"? And oh, by the way, that extra pot: rinse it out; no big deal!

***

Can you spare ten minutes for perfection?

If not, please consider this: After having eaten your half-assed potatoes, when you're on the couch, watching TV, think about those ten minutes, think about all the ten minutes you might have wasted in your life, all the simple little moments you might have missed.

I like how George Saunders describes it in his essay "Buddha Boy":

"You know the feeling at the end of the day, when the anxiety of that-which-I-must-do falls away and, for maybe the first time that day, you see, with some clarity, the people you love and the ways you have, during that day, slightly ignored them, turned away from them to get back to what you were doing, blurted out some mildly hurtful thing, projected, instead of the deep love you really feel, a surge of defensiveness or self-protection or suspicion? That moment when you think, Oh God, what have I done with this day? And what am I doing with my life? And how must I change to avoid catastrophic end-of-life regrets?"

I read this and think solely of my wife, the insane love I feel for her, and the incredible gap between my substantial feelings and my daily expression of those feelings.

Why the gap?

I get tired. I feel unwell. She annoys me. She shows up late. I show up late. It's hot. It's cold.

There's always something.

Lucky, for me, I cook, we cook.

Dinner saves me, each night, from regret.

I put my effort, my heart into each meal. With love, I try to close the gap. I simmer my potatoes; I peel them while they're hot. This is heroism, to me. The goal, the simple goal, is my wife's pleasure.

I am thinking of steam and angels, the secret of persistent firmness, prophetic mashers, the refuge of cooking. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Potato.

***

Perfect Mashed Potatoes

This recipe is adapted from Cook's Illustrated's recipe, in The New Best Recipe. My recipe, I think, highlights the potato's flavor more than the Cook's Illustrated recipe; it's more healthful too, and ultimately more satisfying: it leaves one feeling light, not heavy, ready for a little post-dinner dalliance. I call for peeling the potatoes by hand, but a food mill or ricer works wonderfully well in this recipe, producing the most light, airy potatoes imaginable. Finally, make sure you add the oil BEFORE the coconut milk...I won't explain why.

2 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup coconut milk (full-fat is best)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
Fresh ground black pepper

Place the potatoes in a large saucepan with water to cover. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium and simmer until the potatoes are tender, 25-35 minutes. Drain. Reserve pot for mashing.

Meanwhile, warm the coconut milk in a medium saucepan over low heat. Season the coconut milk with sea salt, and black pepper to taste.

While still warm, cut each potato in half, then peel the skin with fingers or a small paring knife. (Alternately, and much better, place the potatoes, skin-on, into a ricer or food mill.) Drop the peeled potatoes back into the pot you used for boiling.

Gently mash the potatoes with a potato masher. Add olive oil. Add the warmed coconut milk, and gently season with additional salt and pepper, adjusting seasonings to taste.

Serve.

Roasted Red Potatoes with Olive Oil & Fresh Herbs

Fresh herbs and lemon zest brighten the potatoes, as they intensify the flavor of the olive oil.

1 ½ lb small red new potatoes
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, divided
2 tablespoons fresh herbs—basil, thyme, and/or marjoram
1 teaspoon lemon zest
Sea Salt, fresh ground pepper

Preheat oven to 425°F.

Cover potatoes with salted cold water by 1 inch in a 6-quart pot, then simmer, uncovered, 5 minutes.

Slice potatoes in half. Toss potatoes with 1 tablespoon olive oil and a few pinches salt in a bowl. Spread potatoes in 1 layer in a large roasting pan, skin side down, and roast in middle of oven, turning once, until golden, about 20-25 minutes.

Toss with remaining tablespoon olive oil, herbs, sea salt, lemon zest, and fresh pepper to taste.

Serve immediately.

Dear FoodVibe: Gluten Free Recipes

If you have a question, recipe, or blog request e-mail us at foodvibe@gmail.com...

Dear FoodVibe,

I’d appreciate if you could send me some gluten free recipes. This has been quite a lifestyle change for my family; it started with a horrible mystery illness and eventually turned into a diagnosis of celiac disease. So now I am trying to recreate our lifestyle; only thing, my family cooking background is PA Dutch! Needless to say, it’s been a difficult transition.

Thanks,

Kelly

***

Hi Kelly,

Your story is familiar: first, the mystery symptoms; then, the life-changing diagnosis. I can empathize, having experienced this myself. When I was diagnosed with type-1 diabetes I was also tested for celiacs disease. I tested negative, but I soon discovered that eschewing gluten improved my health immensely. I haven’t eaten wheat, rye, or barley for four years. Now, I only eat spelt.

I like what you say, though: you’re trying to “re-create” your lifestyle. Keep that in mind: change can be a creative venture; it doesn’t have to be a punishment. A diagnosis of celiac disease can seem devastating, I know—suddenly, you can’t eat any of the foods you had eaten before: no Cheerios, no coffee bread, no fastnacht, no pizza, no shoo-fly pie, no cookies!—but with this devastation you’re also granted a wonderful initiative: the need, and hopefully, the will, to explore.

I admire your explorer's attitude.

OK, so recipes?

First, let me say: I don’t go for substitutes. I can recommend some decent alternative products—Tinkyada Rice Pasta, for example; or Sakata Rice Crackers—but really I recommend good food: food that is first and foremost delicious, food that is culturally relevant, food that will make you feel like you’re part of the world.

It’s hard enough, I think, to live with an illness like celiac disease; so why make it harder trying to make up for what you’ve lost with inferior substitutes? People who do this, I sometimes think, are missing the point. A recent column in the magazine Living Without, for example, offers: “Perfect Pasta Salads: Your favorite summer dish is better than ever, without the gluten.”

Bullshit. Actually, it’s worse then ever. This is self-deception, plain and simple. I don't go for self deception. And I certainly don’t go for an attitude that defines a diet or a lifestyle as “living without.”

Why not living with?

Which makes me wonder: Do you eat rice?

There are a few Korean guys at my work, sushi chefs. I love, love watching them eat lunch; it’s always, always the same: a tremendous hunk of sushi rice and some sort of fish or meat. These guys relish their rice with infectious gusto; they make the simple act of eating lunch seem like a celebratory feast. And they do this everyday.

Rice is immensely satisfying, and can be immensely delicious, if properly prepared.

For breakfast: Coconut Rice Pudding (recipe below); or my favored breakfast: a bowl of brown rice, with honey and cinnamon.

For lunch: a hunk of rice (easy to re-heat at work) with, say, anything—meat, fish, beans, or vegetables. I like eating rice with a "sauce", like my Blackened Jalapeño and Avocado Sauce (recipe below).

Dinner: risotto; a perfect pot of rice with, say, Pan Roasted Tempeh with Mediterranean Charmoula (recipe below); Pad Thai; sushi.

Beyond rice, have you tried quinoa?

Or buckwheat? I eat kasha for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. How about Kasha and Chickpeas (recipe below), one of my all time favorites?

Or corn-flour? Polenta is utterly satisfying and thoroughly enjoyable; masa harina makes the best tortillas, perfect for re-heating for lunch.

All of these foods have rich cultural connections (quinoa was the ancient grain of the Incans; tempeh was first made in Indonesia in the mid 1600’s), maybe not your culture, but somewhere, some time, people have prepared, shared, and loved all of these foods. In an increasingly globalised world, I see no problem picking and borrowing from whatever cuisine entices us. We can shop locally; but we can always cook globally.

These foods are certainly gluten-free, but I find it much more healthier to think of them as rice-full, or quinoa-full, or polenta-full. Your diet doesn’t have to be about absence; it can be about utter abundance.

Which also makes me wonder: Have you heard of fruit? Every single fruit is gluten free.
Ditto, every single vegetable. I for one could eat potatoes every single night! And I have! And, fruit, oh now is the best, best, best time for fruit: I’d take fresh Jersey blueberries over a cookie anyday!

Think about this. Every single fruit, every single vegetable! (Not to mention, every single bean, fish, meat, chicken, and drug…just kidding about the last one; although marijuana is gluten-free!) Now that you know what it feels like to to live without certain foods, don’t you feel joyous knowing there’s so much you can live with?

Still, I know, it's tough, unimaginably tough to radically alter your diet. And I often think the hardest adaptation for new celiacs patients is saying goodbye to all the treats: cookies, cakes, pies.

When I was first diagnosed with type-1 diabetes, I'd to complain to my wife: Why me? Why can't I do what everyone else does? Why me?

And she'd do this strange thing: she'd mock me!

Boo hoo! She'd say. Boo-hoo!

And she'd keep saying it until I laughed.

So, no cookie?

Well, boo-hoo!

I say grow up; eat chocolate.

***

Coconut Rice Pudding

1 cup Forbidden Black Rice or arborio rice
4 cups full-fat coconut milk
2 cups water
½ cup raw honey
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon sea salt

In a medium saucepan, combine the rice, coconut milk, water raw honey, cinnamon, and sea salt. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to low and simmer for 35-40 minutes, stirring occasionally, until rice is thoroughly cooked.

Chill the rice 1 hour before serving.

Avocado and Blackened Jalapeño Sauce

I originally published this recipe here. It's an adaptation of a wonderful recipe from my friend Obed's wife, Daniella. She served it with the warning: It's too hot for me. This recipe is the HOT version (follow the link for the WIMP version). Serve it with chips, or slathered over chicken, or as a sauce for a bowl of perfectly cooked rice.

Makes about 3 cups

2 large jalapeños
2 large cloves garlic, peeled
2 large Hass avocados, halved, pitted and peeled
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons lime juice
Salt to taste

Heat a small skillet over medium-high heat. Add jalapeños and garlic and cook, shaking the skillet often, until tender and blackened on all sides, 4 to 5 minutes. Set aside to let cool.

Transfer the jalapeños to a blender along with garlic. Add avocados, lime juice and salt and puree until somewhat smooth. With blender still running, slowly drizzle in about 1/2 cup water. Continue to puree until smooth and creamy. Transfer to a bowl and serve.

Pan Roasted Tempeh with Mediterranean Charmoula

Charmoula is a North African marinade typically made of oil, lemon juice, garlic, cumin, cilantro and salt. Here, tempeh is layered in a pan, doused with a Mediterranean version of the classic Charmoula recipe, and roasted until perfectly browned. Serve with basmati rice, cucumber salad and a spicy Shiraz. I originally published this recipe here. This recipe was inspired and adapted from a Peter Berley recipe, from his masterpiece, The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen.

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup vegetable broth or water
4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon lemon zest
2 teaspoons salt
4 whole garlic cloves, chopped
1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped
1/4 fresh basil, chopped
1 pound tempeh, cut into 2-inch squares

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Prepare the charmoula in a small bowl by mixing together the oil, broth, lemon juice, zest, salt, garlic, parsley, and basil; whisk until emulsified.

Layer the tempeh squares in a 9-inch glass baking dish. Pour the charmoula mixture over the tempeh cover the dish tightly with aluminum foil.

Bake for 35–40 minutes; remove the foil and bake for 5-10 more minutes until marinade is absorbed and tempeh is browned.

Kasha and Chickpeas with Caramelized Onions and Mushrooms

This recipe, too, I originally published elsewhere. To me, the smell of kasha cooking is the smell of my Jewish grandparent's house. I eat this dish to make myself feel more fully Jewish, if not religiously, then culturally.


For the Kasha:

2 cups plus 2 tablespoons water
1 cup kasha (roasted buckwheat groats)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil

For the Onions and Mushrooms:

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
Salt
1 tablespoon mirin
1 tablespoon water
8 ounces crimini mushrooms
2 tablespoons chopped parsley, chopped, more for garnish
1 tablespoon finely chopped garlic
1 (15-ounce) can chickpeas

Prepare the kasha: Bring water to boil in a medium saucepan over high heat. Stir in kasha, salt and olive oil. Reduce heat to low, cover and cook for 15 to 18 minutes, until tender. Remove from heat and set aside.

Prepare the onions and mushrooms: Heat olive oil in a wide sauté pan over medium heat. Add the onions and a pinch of salt. Stir to coat. Add mirin and water, cover, and cook gently over medium-low heat until onions are soft and translucent, 12 to 14 minutes.

Add the mushrooms, raise the heat to high, and cook, stirring frequently, until mushrooms are browned, 6 to 8 minutes. Reduce the heat to low, add parsley, garlic and chickpeas and simmer for 5 to 7 minutes longer, stirring occasionally, until liquid has evaporated.

Lightly fluff kasha with a fork and transfer to a serving bowl or platter. Spoon the chickpeas and vegetables over the kasha. Garnish with parsley leaves and serve.

Let them eat petrol

Last week all over Spain truck drivers went on strike. The reason was simple: Gasoline prices are ballooning; working now actually costs more money than many workers make.

Andrés and I don’t pay much attention to the price of gasoline. We don’t have a car. Hell, he doesn't even have a driving license. We live in a city with a decent public transport system and we really only use it when we don’t feel like walking or biking, which isn’t very often. Of course, though, the current rise in oil prices manifests itself in other places. Our flights home this year were unmentionably expensive. And, of course, the prices of most commodities have gone up.

Last week, the transport sector decided they had had enough. For five days they refused to pick up or deliver anything. They spent that time sitting in the right hand lane of every major highway in Spain, greatly disturbing traffic patterns. This in a country that thinks the number of wheels on the road is directly proportionate to its ranking in the first world.

So, for five days: Nothing picked up, nothing delivered. Not even the mail.

Photos in the local papers showed farmers in Galicia dumping milk into the fields; fruits and vegetables left to rot in warehouses; and tattooed truck drivers sitting stubbornly in the cabs of their great trucks, refusing to budge.

Naturally, people panicked.

By Wednesday every supermarket in Barcelona had been picked clean. I went to the Sant Antoni market and it looked like Sunday. I went to Bon Preu and I was met with an apocalyptic sight. The produce section contained nothing but empty fruit crates, a rotting head of lettuce and, oddly enough, a few organic avocados and tomatoes, which I promptly decided to buy. The meat and poultry section loomed in iridescent whiteness at the back of the store. The shelves containing rice and pasta had been picked bare. There was no bottled water, no cartons of milk. The remaining jarred and tinned goods stood like solitary figures on the desert landscape of the preserves aisle. It looked as though people were preparing for war. (Or at the very least a snowstorm in the North East).

But Andrés and I didn’t panic. In fact, we spent the greater part of last week picking our own cupboards bare, endeavouring to produce good meals without actually purchasing much of anything. And it was fun.

It did become frighteningly clear, though, how inexorably tied we are to oil; how powerless we are in front of our dependence on oil, and how little we have done to protect ourselves from the consequences of that dependence. Oil is inextricably tied to our most basic needs and we've just sat back and watched it happen.

***

Things are back to normal today. Prices have been jacked up three times what they were nine days ago. The businesses are merely trying to make up for the losses they suffered last week.

But the lessons of last week do not forebode well; they linger. One of the most disturbing images of the ‘crisis’ was a police escort for half a dozen oil tankers, provided by the government to make sure the service stations continued working as normal. There were no special trucks employed for food or water. No police escort. As far as sustenance goes it would appear that petrol trumps all.

***

Here are some of our favorite recipes from last week. This section is titled "Scavengers' delight".

Black Bean and Orange Soup
We always have plenty of dried or jarred pulses on hand. The dried are mostly for slow cooking; the jarred to prepare hummus for unexpected guests or whip up a quick lentil soup. This being Spain, there are always oranges. The soup gets thick once it cools. It can be re-heated and served over rice or used as stuffing for a fajita or burrito.

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 medium garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/8 teaspoon ground clove
2 15 oz. cans black beans
1 teaspoon orange zest (optional)
1 cup orange juice, preferably freshly squeezed
1 bay leaf
Sea salt and fresh ground pepper

Heat the oil in a large Dutch oven, over medium heat. Add the onion and salt and saute until soft, 10-12 minutes. Add the garlic, oregano, cumin, and cloves and saute until fragrant, 1 minute.

Add 1 cup beans, orange zest, orange juice, and 1 cup water. Mash the beans with a fork. Simmer, uncovered over medium-high heat, until liquid is reduced and thickened, five minutes.

Add the remaining beans, bay leaf, and 6 cups water. Simmer, uncovered, for 25-30 minutes, until soup is fragrant and somewhat thick.

Serve.


Pumpkin, Red Pepper, and Zuchinni Curry

We had a zucchini and half a red pepper lying around. And the only thing left at the veggie stand on Mistral was a small pumpkin, which I thought was funny.

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoons turmeric
1/2 teaspoon clove
1/2 small pumpkin, peeled and cubed (about 1 cup)
1/2 red pepper, cut into 1/2 inch chunks
1 can coconut milk
1 zucchini, cubed
Basmati rice

Heat the oil in a large deep frying pan or wok over medium heat. Add the onion and salt and saute until soft, 10-12 minutes. Add cumin, turmeric, and clove and saute until fragrant, 1 minute.

Add pumpkin and saute until browned, 5 minutes. Add red pepper and saute for 2-3 minutes.

Add coconut milk and simmer, partially covered over medium heat, until liquid is reduced and pumpkin is soft, 15-20 minutes.

Serve over rice.


Quick Tomato Sauce

I gave Andrés a pasta maker for Christmas and every Saturday or Sunday we have homemade pasta, which requires nothing but egg and flour. I usually make the sauce. Last Sunday all we had was a large can of whole, peeled tomatoes.

1 can of chopped tomatoes, including juice
4 large cloves of garlic, crushed
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup red wine
2 teaspoons dried thyme
1 teaspoon honey
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese

In a medium saucepan over medium heat combine tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, red wine, thyme, honey, fresh ground pepper, and salt. Simmer, uncovered, for 20-25 minutes.

Serve over pasta with plenty of freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

Juice

I first tried carrot juice fifteen years ago in Seth's kitchen. He presented me with a glass of fresh juice and dared me to try it. It looked funny, too orange. I was apprehensive. Raw carrot juice was for people like Seth and his dad, Ira--people whom I thought were obsessively concerned with health and wellness. Not me.

In the blossom of my high school years, I was insufferable. I ate whatever I wanted. I smoked. I was a weekend binge drinker. I gained thirty pounds every summer, and then lost it all again in October before wrestling season. I never wore a seat belt. Still years away from any real sense of accountability or adulthood, I was invincible--a portrait of hubris, clueless and stoned.

And yet, carrot juice intrigued me.

"If you drink this," Seth said, "You'll feel so stoned."

"Really?"

"Drink it."

So I drank. It tasted sharp and sweet and potent, like some exotic liquor. Ten minutes later, I didn't feel stoned; I felt horrible, doubled over in pain. He explained how my system, in its state of toxicity, was most likely rebelling against the juice, which was all wholesomeness and purity.

Spitting curses, I refused to believe him. I stayed away from carrot juice for a long time.

***

I hated vegetables as a child.

Because mom only knew how to overcook vegetables, I ate them overcooked. Boiling was her preferred method: death by water. By the time she finished cooking, the color and nutrients would bleed out, staining the water a deeper color than the vegetables themselves.

In section IV of The Wasteland, Death by Water, T.S. Elliot writes of Phlebas, the drowned Phoenecian sailor, whose lifeless body bobs like a cork in the water for two weeks:

"Phlebas the Phoenecian, a fortnight dead,

Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and the loss.

A current under sea

Picked his bones in whispers."

Floating with the tide, his salt-bleached skin and bloated impotent form remind me of my mother's vegetables--the look, the taste. Stacked on my plate, their limp, pale bodies were grim reminders of the life they once contained. Neutered, languid, and nutritionally vacant, there could be no rebirth; their nutrients would not pass on to me. They were truly dead.

No wonder I hated eating them.

***

Throughout history, philosophers like Aristotle have tried to pin down the nature of essence--to describe it as something that contains the whole of a thing, even in infinitesimal quantities. To be an "essence" means to have one hundred percent of the qualities or properties of a thing in only a small fraction of its true form.

Think spark as an essence of fire. Think soul as an essence of life. Think vegetable juice as the essence of the vegetable itself.

By drinking vegetable juice, you are getting nearly the full essence, almost one hundred percent of the nutritional benefit, minus the matter or roughage. In other words, the nutrients are directly absorbed into the bloodstream for an unparalleled energy boost.

This is why many people become obsessed with the health benefits of juicing. To some, it becomes an entire lifestyle. There is an entire web-based niche market devoted to these type of people. Think Jack Lalane . Think this guy.

Yet that seems to be the allure. Most people who juice are not part-time dilettantes. They are enrapt with the juicing idea and lifestyle. Many juicers are eccentric, extreme people.Their clothing and fingertips are permanently stained purple from cutting slicing raw beets. You can find them stalking the supermarket produce aisle late at night because they know this is the time when produce boys, in green aprons and plastic gloves, begin to stock the shelves with fresh vegetables. They are the ones who ask for organic kale. They are the ones who buy the purple chard and mustard greens.

I'm thinking of one evening last week: It's 11:30 p.m. and I have nothing in the fridge to juice in the morning. I have to pick up some vegetables. Now. I hop in the car and drive forty-five minutes to the only late-night supermarket I know in Manhattan. Save for the hum and crackle of the lights, the store is silent and empty. I walk to the produce section. The machine that sprays water vapor on the leafy greens in has gone haywire, spraying its misty arc randomly into the air over the aisle; it creates a barely perceptible shimmer in the florescent light. It looks unreal, chilly.

We moved days before, and all of my clothing is still in boxes. I've been wearing the same baggy, white linen pants, moccasins, and blue shirt for four days and haven't showered in quite some time.

I run my hand over the heads of broccoli. I scratch the itchy, week-long growth on my chin. I think to myself as I walk through the water mist, a plastic basket hung through my arm, What the hell am I doing here?

For the first time I realize I am truly a juicer. I smile. The wheat grass looks so fresh. So green.

***

Juicing requires devotion, if only for the time it takes to prepare the vegetables, juice them, break down the machine, clean its parts, and reassemble it. For the uninitiated, it can be a long process. Many people who give up on juicing do so for this reason. I now have the cleanup stage down to about 5 minutes, but it took me a few years to get there.

Like fasting and cleansing, juicing is also a something people use for detox and healing. Many people use juice fasts as a way to kick-off a longer, more comprehensive health recovery or weight loss regimen. Others include juicing into their daily, long-term routines.

While researching juicing regimens on the web, I came across many sites devoted to juicing leafy green vegetables like kale, chard, spinach, bok choi, wheat grass, collard greens, and cabbage. The idea is the greener it is, or the more chlorophyll contained in the vegetable, the better it is for you. Unfortunately, leafy greens can taste pretty bad compared to beets, carrots and other sugar laden vegetables.

My juicing regimen used to consist of carrots and beets. I often juiced whole bags of carrot. Then I realized how much sugar I was putting into my body. Since then, I've stuck primarily to leafy greens, with a few carrots and beets thrown in for taste.

When I first tried juicing greens, I was surprised to see my shabby, forty-dollar centrifugal juicer produce such high quality juice from leafy greens. I expected a frothy mess with little or no good juice. But it all went well--not much foam either. It even rivals what some of the fancy juicers can do.

It ain't absinthe, but it'll get you high.

The first time I made it, I didn't drink it right away. I was a little awed. I bent down to look into it closely. I moved it around in the light and studied it for awhile. Smelling the foam, I decided it was the greenest thing I had ever seen. If the color green had a scent, it was this. It held me spellbound for awhile, lost in its depths. Gearing up for the worst, I took a little sip. It wasn't bad. Shocked, I downed half of the glass. It wasn't bad at all--nowhere near the bitter, acrid bile I was expecting. It was even a bit refreshing.

I can do this, I thought.

I lift the glass again.

***

It's now 5:15 am. I have to be at work in three hours. I just finished cleaning my juicer in the sink, a once tedious, time-consuming process that I now complete in no time at all.

A twenty-ounce glass of cabbage, spinach, garlic and carrot juice stands before me, taunting me with its bitter potency. I think back to the first time I tried juice all those years ago in Seth's house. In defiance, I pick up the glass and down the whole thing like a tequila shot. I stand up. There's a rumbling going on somewhere in the depths of my bowels. I sit back down.

I feel funny. I think I'm stoned.

I should call out of work today.

This produced 16 ounces of juice.

Steve's Green Juice:

All ingredients should be used fresh, preferably bought the same day. I use a centrifugal juicer, in which a spinning metal blade grinds the vegetables, expelling the juice from one end, while catching the roughage in a container at the other end. Most people say that leafy greens are best juiced in a single auger or manual press juicer.

Also, remember to use only organic produce while juicing. This is important. You don't want to consume super-concentrated levels of pesticides and agri-chemicals.

1 medium sized cucumber

2 celery stalks

a lot of spinach

1 head bok choi (green part only)

1 large handful cilantro

1 olive-sized piece ginger

(If you want, add a few carrots or some beet for taste, but you'll lose that fabulous green color.)

Hay calçots

Here in Barcelona we have tomatoes in January. This is thanks to the enormous greenhouses in southern Spain, in a region called Murcia. It is said that the greenhouses in Murcia are so large that they are one of the few manmade objects that can be seen from space.

The tomatoes from these greenhouses are not very good. Greenhouses of space-age proportions do not provide the best environment in which to nourish food that nourishes. But they do create an environment that is able to fuel the ‘get what you want when you want it culture’ that is now permeating Europe since it was first imported from the United States some fifteen years ago.

And what the greenhouses are unable to provide can always be imported from China.

But it is not January. It is the end of May. And the rains we so desperately hoped for in April have finally begun to fall. The end of the drought is tentatively announced. The city’s water supply has risen to such a level that the ban on watering gardens has been lifted and the fountains have begun flowing again. The air smells greener. For the last few months they have been bringing water up from the Murcian desert, together with the tomatoes.

Yes, the rains of May have washed away the dirty threat of water rationing, which will not be missed. But they also mark the passing of a season that comes but once a year to Catalonia whose return next year we all look forward to.

The season of the calçot.

Calçots are in the onion family. They have been described as a cross between a leek and a spring onion or green onion, without actually having any direct relation to any of the three. Calçots are now the only food that you really have to wait for. Tomatoes in January. Plums in March. Mangoes when you want them. Mangoes don’t even grow here. They import them from Brazil. But not the calçot. You can only find them from February to April. By the end of April they’re hard to come by. And you can only find them in Catalonia, particularly in the province of Tarragona. It is a culinary tradition that Catalans hold fast to. And to see how the Mediterranean diet they delusionally lay claim to is being replaced by fritanga and meals that come in boxes, it is truly heartening to spot the Hay calçots signs that begin to spring up in restaurant windows just when the buzz from the holidays has worn off.

The calçot is one of the last bastions of locally produced and, perhaps even more importantly, locally celebrated foods remaining here.

And how they are celebrated!

The calçot, like any good food, is as much ritual as it is nourishment. It is celebrated in such ritualistic fashion not recommended for the faint of heart. They are traditionally grilled over open flame and eaten as an accompaniment to grilled lamp and are usually served in clay roof tiles sometimes lined with newspaper. When they hit the table, the rite begins and everything you ever learned about table manners and proper etiquette is roguishly pushed aside.

It is a ritual only for those who don’t mind getting their hands dirty. Oh, it is messy – your fingers blackened with the soot of the grill as you peel off the first layer of skin, which slides off easily, to get to the sweet warm center. The soot mixes with the calçot's sticky juices and gets under your fingernails and refuses to leave.

And it is a ritual only for those who don’t mind looking ridiculous. Calçots are usually eaten standing up. The first layer of skin is peel away and the calçot dipped into salsa romesco, a reddish sauce made with hazelnuts and red peppers. The appropriate stance must then be taken. Some find it most comfortable to stand with their feet shoulder-width apart, knees slightly bent. The head is tilted back and the calçot, dripping with romesco sauce, is raised over the head and lowered into the mouth, inadvertently getting sauce all over your face and occasionally in your hair. Bibs are recommended for novices.

And it is a ritual only for those who relish in copious amounts of red wine and laughter, as everyone enjoys the fun and soot and ridiculousness of the moment. The addictiveness and the deliciousness of the rite ensures that twenty to thirty calçots will be eaten per person. Bloated bellies promise that the subway ride home is to be among giggles and accidental gas leaks. So it should be added that is also a ritual only for those who are comfortable making references to bodily functions in the presence of friends and strangers alike. It also helps to find the word pedo absolutely hilarious.

Bibs are recommended for neophytes

Pablo and Ingrid do it standing up

My father, who is blind, has said that the day he finally tries calçots we should place a napkin or tablecloth over his face and later frame the resulting Pollack. I like this connection between Jackson Pollack and calçots. Perhaps that’s the food he would have been. A calçot – fun and reckless and messy and served with plenty of red wine.

This Tastes Weird

I started cooking for others when I was six or seven years old. I made a hamburger for my best friend Jared. It was a Play-Doh hamburger. I stuffed it with little rocks and I presented it to Jared, jammed in a Stroehman's bun.

"Go ahead," I said.

"This looks weird," he said.

Honestly, Jared was my enemy. I hoped he might die. At the very least, I hoped he might stop spending so much time with my real best friend, Chris. Jared actually tried the burger. He was a troubled kid, clueless and adventurous.

"This tastes weird," he said, chewing little rocks.

My early forays into cooking were always like this: I'd throw some shit together and see what happened. After The Jared Incident (as it came to be known in my house) I started experimenting with real, edible food, the type of food one swallows and digests. Still, my evil, youthful urge was to fuck around with people, so my early creations were always disgusting.

I enjoyed combining things (soda, mustard, bananas, for example) and blending them into a smoothie. I used a lot of ketchup, a lot of eggs (raw ones), and I'd make my little sister try everything. My sister, god bless her soul, developed a cute little eating disorder.

I never tried my own recipes. I learned my lesson early on, after a failed attempt to replace milk with Diet Coke in a traditional recipe. The recipe was Honey Nut Cheerios and milk. The Diet Coke gave it a tinny, disgusting medicinal taste.

Then something happened. One summer day I was hanging around, plucking honeysuckle flowers. I pinched the bottom, pulled out the stamen, and sucked the little drop of nectar, so exquisite and sweet. After about fifty flowers, I was struck with a profound inspiration: Why not make honeysuckle juice? I actually tried. I pulled out the stamen and deposited the nectar into a little Dixie cup. After two, three hours I had maybe one half teaspoon of nectar. I went inside, mixed the nectar with some water in a little shot glass and presented the drink it to my sister.

"I'm telling!" she said, which was what she always said.

Somehow, though, I convinced her to try it. She gulped it, actually.

"This tastes good?" she said.

I found this immensely satisfying, far more satisfying than, "This tastes weird." Sure it took me three hours to make the goddamn recipe. Sure my sister's gulp seemed brief and insignificant--but man, I'd made something good! That was new. That was surprising.

***

Today I make a living developing recipes. I make my recipes, and I let people try them. I feel genuine, heartfelt satisfaction when people try my recipes. I get a sincere kick out of watching people eat food I've made. I get so happy, too, when people love my food, when they smile and feel joyful, even if it's a tiny joy, a brief interlude in an otherwise ordinary day.

I try many of my own recipes, but I do have many recipes I've developed that I haven't ever tried. My diet is strange and idiosyncratic. I avoid many foods and food combinations. I'm allergic to some dishes, "sensitive" to others, and sometimes scared of others. If I eat a scallop I might die. If I eat pasta I develop a migraine headache. And something like eggplant just freaks me out. My eating disorder is strange and real.

Obviously, as a professional, I can't avoid these foods in my recipes. So I work on instinct, feeling my way through my recipes, and then I let other people tell me what they think.

I cook a kick-ass scallop (sauteed, lightly, in compound butter), I'm told. My Kasha Varnishkes, I'm told, would make my Jewish grandmother proud. And eggplant? Well, fuck eggplant.

Sometimes, when I think about these recipes, I feel like a sad clown: everyone else is laughing, but I'm crying inside. In my case, everyone's eating my recipes, getting plump and happy, and I'm on the sidelines, sipping my tea, feeling skinny and weird.

A Suzanne paperclip photo

I think my most unique recipe is my Strawberry Avocado Salsa. I developed the recipe nearly three years ago for a strawberry festival and it was a instant, smash hit. Since then, at work at least, the recipes become my signature recipe, qualified by co-workers and customers alike as quintessentially Seth.

I love the way the salsa looks upon completion. I'm a big advocate of the disparate ingredients: strawberries, avocado, cilantro, scallions, jalapeño, and lime. Still, there's something about the combination of all these ingredients that scares me, and so I've never once even tried it. Not one single bite. I'm aware that this sounds ludicrous, even, perhaps from a cook's perspective, unethical.

What can I say? Strawberry Avocado Salsa sort of reminds me of my early creations--something that tastes weird. I envision myself eating it and feeling weird for hours.

I suppose I'm writing about this because I've recently thought I might try the recipe, perhaps paired with thinly sliced sweet potatoes, pan-seared in olive oil. I'm thinking about it, making my way there. It's a huge thing for me.

In the meantime, I'll keep making it for others, getting my kicks vicariously, with each little joyful bite.

Strawberry Avocado Salsa

I've already published this recipe on-line, elsewhere. That recipe is good, but I'm changing it a bit, below, in an attempt to "reclaim" the recipe for FoodVibe. Consider this recipe below the definitive Strawberry Avocado Salsa recipe, straight from the source. This recipe is about gentle, exquisite preparation. I suggest taking your time, following the recipe precisely...

1 pound strawberries
1 jalapeño pepper, minced
1/4 cup scallion, finely chopped
2 tablespoons cilantro, finely chopped
1 lime, quartered
1/4 teaspoon sugar, optional
sea salt
2 firm-ripe avocados

Remove the green stems from the strawberries. Gently chop the strawberries, using clean, swift knife strokes so that each chopped piece is only touched briefly by the knife.

In small bowl, gently, very gently, toss the strawberries with the jalapeño, scallion, and cilantro. Squeeze a quarter of lime onto the strawberry salsa and season with sugar, if desired, and sea salt.

Half the avocados, remove the pit and the skin. Finely, and very smoothly and carefully, dice the avocados and place into a small bowl. Squeeze two quarters lime juice onto the avocado and gently toss.

Pour strawberry salsa in the bowl with the avocados. Gently toss. Season with additional salt and lime juice, if desired. Serve...