April Poem #6

DESERT AUBADE

Lying in bed in the small hours of the morning,

your warm belly fits the hollow of my back.

Even the neighbors’ dogs are quiet.

The birds, even the white-winged doves, are quiet.

Bees that feasted on mesquite blossoms last evening,

filling the yard with their humming, are asleep.

Bats with their sharp-edged wings are going to sleep,

and the pale silent swooping owls, while other birds awake.

Other hunters are awake too, bobcat and coyote.

Sleepy prey, rabbit and quail, stumbling,

scurry again into the pale light of beginning,

the time of hunting and hiding,

the time without shadows.

The sweet breath of jasmine drifts through open windows.

Your hand moves on my shoulder. I turn to you.

We stretch together, rearrange arms and pillows,

kiss softly, closed-mouth morning kisses,

and open our eyes to each other.

            - Victoria Stefani (draft)

Today's prompt from NaPoWriMo was to write an aubade, a poem of waking up, of early morning.

And now I'm caught up, because it's not midnight yet! All comments are much appreciated. Please . . . .

April Poem #5

 THIS IS HOW YOU CONQUER AN ARTICHOKE

I have seen strong men grow weak and pale

at the sight of this delicious thistle.

How can anyone be afraid of a vegetable?

And yet they are, so it has become our task

to make them less threatening.

First the stems have to go, so the globes can’t be swung

like maces upside the heads of the slow or unwary.

But don’t throw the stems away. Just slice off 

the bottom bit and boil the rest along 

with the artichoke proper. (Put lemon juice 

or vinegar in the water so things don't turn dark and disgusting.)

Now for the pointy ends. This isn’t Game of Thrones.

Scissors work better than knives to cut the sharp

tips off each leaf. Throw them away or compost them.

And while you’re at it, throw away the bottom

two or three tiers of leaves, just above where the stem was.

They’re tough, with nothing on them you’ll enjoy.

Pick your battles. Concentrate on prizes worth winning.

Oh, and slice off the whole top inch or so,

sort of as if you were giving the globe a crew cut.

That sounds nicer than decapitation, doesn’t it?

Now into that big kettle of acidulated water.

(That’s Julia Child’s term. It will make you sound

very French chef and intimidating.)

Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer

till tender. As countless medieval battles have shown,

when you pour oil down on your enemies 

from the battlements, a simmer’s as effective as a boil,

so don’t waste fuel. Start testing at twenty-five

minutes, by poking a skewer or a thin sharp knife

into the flat base. The leaves won’t tell you anything worth knowing,

so don’t waste time on them. 

When the base is nice and tender – don’t cook it too long –

take the artichoke out of the water and stand it

upside down on a rack or in a colander

to drain out the excess water. There will

be more than you expect. That’s typical in warfare,

no matter if it’s water or blood running.

You’ll notice how slicing off the top

to make it nice and flat also makes the draining easier.

You’ll have two basic choices at this point.

Do you want to eat the artichoke hot, with butter,

or cold, with mayonnaise or some other dressing?

If the first, melt some salted butter, pour it in little dishes

and set it on or beside your plate.

Starting with the larger leaves at the bottom,

pull off one at a time and dip the fleshy end,

where it was attached, into the butter.

Now, still holding it by the unbuttered end,

put it curved side up into your mouth,

and drag it out again, scraping the soft

buttered flesh of the inner leaf off with your lower teeth.

Don’t hurry. Sensual pleasures shouldn’t be rushed.

Discard what’s left of each leaf as you finish with it.

It’s thoughtful to provide a container for that,

or at least to make sure one's plate is big enough to contain the debris.

You may be surprised to find the pile of stripped leaves

looks bigger than the artichoke did when it was whole, 

rather like a field after battle.

Soon you’ll get down to the smaller, more tender

leaves near the middle. There’s far less waste with them.

And then you come to the choke, no longer leaves

but a pale, hairy tuft that you’ll want to pull off and toss away.

If you eat it, as the name implies, you'll choke.

Sometimes you can pull most of it off –

you’ve realized by now that eating an artichoke

is a very hands-on proposition, at least

the first part is, with little need for silverware –

though you’ll probably want to scrape off the smaller

bits of the choke with your spoon or knife.

When you’ve done that, you’ve reached your real goal,

you’ve stormed the gates, taken the citadel,

leaving piles of dead and wounded in your wake.

Don’t worry about them. Take a moment

to peruse the site of your victory. The heart

is like a little saucer, or a cushion, round and flat

with a slight indentation in the middle.

After all that hand-to-hand combat,

you’ll need to pick up your weapons again.

Use your knife and fork to cut the heart

into four pieces (or three or even two,

if you have a big mouth and don’t mind looking like

a wild beast), then dip each piece into the butter

before you put it in your mouth.

Do take your time. When it’s gone, it’s gone.

The process is the same if you eat it cold,

but with mayonnaise or something like it instead

of butter. I recommend letting the artichoke cool

to room temperature rather than chilling it in the refrigerator.

You don’t want to appear too cold-blooded,

and I think it robs the flavor as it cools the tongue.

It’s really very simple. Take your time,

be fearless and deliberate. You’ll come

away the victor, with all the choicest spoils, and unscathed.

                  - Victoria Stefani (draft)

So I'm a day behind, finishing yesterday's poem today, more or less, and will have to finish up today's tomorrow and then hopefully catch up.

     This is another mash-up, this time of Robert Lee Brewer's suggestion to write a vegetable poem and There Is No Pilot's prompt, which was to "Write an explanatory poem, in which you give instructions on how to do something. The something can be real or metaphorical." It is true that I have seen at least one grown man quail at the prospect of eating an artichoke, and I do believe there was more to it than the prospect of something he'd never done before, or had managed to avoid so far. I certainly didn't expect the poem to wind up so long; I thought it would be more of a quick skirmish than a prolonged siege. So please, tell me what you think: should I have tackled something earthier, like turnips, or more accessible, like carrots or iceberg lettuce?

April Poem #4

WHEN I KNEW

Snaking between redwoods, inland up 299 

in my old brown Mazda. You were driving. 

The sky between the tall dark trees 

was clearing, from coastal gray to blue, 

when out of the tall grass a raccoon 

waddled into the left lane, our lane, 

followed by four small gray furballs. 

You slammed on the brake,

we fishtailed onto the gravel shoulder and back. 

Without thanks or pause the raccoons went on 

across the right lane, over the shoulder, into the brush and safety. 

Behind us an eighteen-wheeler's brakes shrieked, 

its horn blasted a long loud curse.
The driver flipped us off as he changed lanes,
just missing the last little raccoon.

"That guy's really pissed," you said, and we laughed. 

"Yes," I replied, "but mama and babies are safe."
And that was all we said about it.

When I learned to drive in high school,
the instructor said never swerve.
Better to kill an animal than risk your own safety. 

Probably. Pragmatically. I guess. 

But here's what I know. Sometimes 

we just act on instinct, and things turn out as they should. 

At Willow Creek we had lunch and sat in the sun 

by the river, drinking beer and reading poetry to each other. 

We filled up at the service station next to the Bigfoot statue 

before heading back to fog and damp. 

You said you liked the way the car handled on the twisty bits: 

"Inside every man is a fifteen-year-old boy, you know." 

"I'm sleeping with a fifteen-year-old boy?" I gasped. 

You grinned, made an unnecessary racing change, 

accelerated out of a sharp curve.

The road straightened as we neared home. 

At the place where you didn't kill the raccoons 

we met two log trucks headed the other way. 

Nothing else of note. No wildlife crossing. No roadkill. 

Just a clear highway leading out of the forest, 

across pastures edged in blackberries 

where cattle grazed in buttercups up to their knees, 

toward a soft gray sunset over a pewter sea.

                                  --Victoria Stefani (draft)

Today's prompt comes from NaPoWriMo http://www.napowrimo.net/day-four-3/: to write a love poem without the word "love" and "avoid the flowers and rainbows." Or write a break-up poem, but again, "without the traditional trappings you associate with the subject matter." I think this is a love poem, but you can decide. And please let me know!

I found yet another "poem-a-day challenge" blog, this one called "There Is No Pilot" http://there-is-no-pilot.blogspot.com/2015/03/prompts-for-poem-day-challenge-april.html?spref=fb. It's worth checking out.

It's April again, National Poetry Month, and once more I'm writing a Poem a Day. Well, at least I have these first 3 days.

Though I don't necessarily write in response to them, I enjoy the daily prompts on NaPoWriMo http://www.napowrimo.net/ and Robert Lee Brewer's "Poetic Asides" blog: http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/poetic-asides. Today's poem is sort of a mash-up of the two: NaPoWriMo's "fourteener" in which every line has fourteen syllables (use as many or as few lines as you like) and Brewer's prompt to write a poem about a machine (the term "machine" can be applied very loosely). I recommend checking out both blogs daily for both inspiration and entertainment.

And now, without further ado, here's this morning's effort (with a pretty lame title, so if you have any suggestions, or any other comments, I'd be delighted if you'd share them in the comment section below):

TECHNOLOGIES AND TINDERBOXES

“Well, that was before we had technology,” the kid says

from the back corner. He wears his baseball cap backwards, slumps

low in his seat. Last week when I said write about something

that interests you, he asked if he’d get a lower grade

if it was boring. “Well, duh,” I said. Some kids squirmed at that.

“So what do you all think ‘technology’ means?” I ask them.

Computers, they say. Even my ninety-year-old mother,

who is not in this class, but is in some ways as much a

product of ‘technology’ as they are, says that. Cable

TV, TMZ, smartphone, a lifeline, she’s got it all,

even if she doesn’t wear the lifeline, doesn’t charge the

phone, and thinks real people mess with her internet server

just to annoy her or make her think she’s going crazy.

“There was a time, you know,” I say, “when hammerstones and

a piece of obsidian constituted radical

technology.” I catch myself before I say “I can

remember when . . . .” Probably some of them already think

I’m that old. “And candles. Can you even imagine what

a revolution they must have been? Artificial light,

whenever you wanted it, without building a real fire?

But to light them you’d need matches, or before that, flint and

tinder that you could carry around in a little box

on a string around your neck.” And all of them look pensive,

their minds like tinder, I think, if I could find the right flint.

When I was a little girl my grandmother told me a

story about a soldier who stole a tinderbox from

a witch; he used it to get rich and marry a princess.

Grandma didn’t tell me what a tinderbox was, or how

it worked. She’d grown up with matches, after all,

and besides, the tinderbox was magic, got from a witch.

I never expected to understand magic, only

hoped I’d be smart enough to recognize and use it if

I got the chance. Like hammerstones. Like matches. Like candles.

If you can't make it to San Francisco . . . .

If you can't make it to San Francisco for a wonderful meal, Charles Phan’s The Slanted Door is the next best thing, a beautiful book, both in appearance and content, that is much more than just a cookbook. In addition to a wonderful collection of recipes from Phan’s renowned eponymous San Francisco restaurant, every one of them represented in gorgeous, elegantly simple, full-page photographs, this book is a memoir that makes you wish Charles Phan was your neighbor, not only for the amazing food he would serve if he invited you to dinner, but because success has not spoiled him. He remembers where he came from and all the people who were part of his journey, and his honesty, humility, and gratitude are refreshing and, I believe, sincere.

The current Slanted Door, a large, elegant restaurant in San Francisco’s Ferry Building, is actually the third to bear that name. Phan’s first Slanted Door opened in much humbler quarters at 584 Valencia Street in 1995, where, in addition to fresh and innovative cuisine created entirely from scratch, he used his background in architecture and ceramics to create a dining experience unlike that in any other Vietnamese restaurant. Even in those early days, he was committed to seasonal and locally sourced foods, and he made wine and fine teas part of the whole at the Slanted Door. Word spread quickly, and after a couple of years at an interim location, Phan moved the Slanted Door to its current location, but his commitment to quality, innovation, and elegant simplicity remains unchanged.

The history of the restaurant is intimately intertwined with Phan’s personal history, beginning in 1975 when South Vietnam fell to North Vietnamese forces and Phan’s family fled their country with hundreds of thousands of other refugees. By 1977, Phan was fifteen and he and his family were living in San Francisco, where he attended high school and worked at various menial jobs. He learned from every experience and brought all he had learned, together with a commitment to honest, ethnic food made with the best and freshest ingredients, into play when he opened his first restaurant. Consequently, it is only right that history, culture, and food are intertwined throughout The Slanted Door. You may begin by leafing through it in search of recipes, or to salivate over the pictures, but most readers will find themselves drawn into Phan’s narrative, seasoned as it is with anecdotes, appreciation, and his own warm persona.

One of the many nice things about the book is that it’s not all in Phan’s voice, enjoyable as that voice is. The Slanted Door is famous for its cocktails, and the “Cocktails” section of the book is written by Erik Adkins, the restaurant’s bar director, while Chaylee Priete, its wine director, authors the section on “Wine.” The Slanted Door’s innovative design and its history are related by Olle Lundberg, the architect Phan worked with to create it. Phan obviously believes in giving people credit for what they do well, and in sharing responsibility and encouraging creativity among his staff. I think he would be a wonderful boss.

But The Slanted Door is, in fact, a cookbook, and what a cookbook it is, with recipes divided into sections on starters, cocktails, raw bar, salads, soups, mains, and desserts, as well as an end section devoted to “Basics” such as a simple but distinctly Asian chicken stock, flavored soy sauce, peanut sauce, the pickled radishes and pickled carrots found in Vietnamese banh mi, and a caramel sauce composed simply of palm sugar and fish sauce that is essential to Phan’s recipe for Caramelized Chicken Claypot, one of many recipes I plan to try.

This may be elegant restaurant food, but it’s also simple home cooking, and most of the recipes and their ingredients will be accessible to readers who have a well-stocked supermarket or ethnic market reasonably close by. The shrimp and long beans are easy and delicious, though I used regular green beans (Phan says that’s okay), and at this time of year – strawberry season – his strawberry sorbet is the perfect simple, fresh dessert. From the vegetarian crepes to the spicy squid salad with Chinese (or regular) celery to steamed halibut with ginger lime broth to the Slanted Door’s signature shaking beef, I can hardly wait to cook my way through this big, beautiful, warm-hearted, wonderful book.

Lovely to Look At . . . A Cookbook Review

In Her Kitchen: Stories and Recipes from Grandmas Around the World by Gabriele Galimberti is a visually beautiful book.  Galimberti's premise/project is simple: over a period of eighteen months he traveled to sixty different countries around the world and interviewed, cooked (with only a couple of exceptions), and ate with at least one grandmother in each country (unaccountably, though some regions of the world are omitted entirely, he includes four grandmothers from Brazil, two from Argentina, and three from the United States, though one of those is from Alaska, which might seem rather foreign to those in the lower 48).
       
The entries are ordered by each woman's last name, and each one is allotted four pages: two of photographs, one of the grandmother in her kitchen and another of the dish she prepared for Galimberti; two of text, one that tells us something about the individual grandmother and sometimes a little about her culture, country, and what she cooked while the other provides the recipe. It's a good, logical organizing strategy and the photographs are wonderful, which is not surprising, since Galimberti is primarily a photographer, whose work has appeared in many publications, including Newsweek, Le Monde, and Vanity Fair. Each woman is shown in her cooking area or dining room, with the ingredients of the dish she made spread out in front of her. They are incredibly diverse and all beautiful, both the women - whose pride and pleasure shine from their faces - and the food, though some of the dishes are more interesting than others. 

I found several dishes I may try, although probably not the caterpillars in tomato sauce prepared by Regina Lifumbo of Malawi, who has a fantastic smile and looks much younger than her 53 years; the caterpillars are dried and are a regional dietary staple. But I will probably make Ayten Okgu's Turkish stuffed eggplant and Gnep Tan's Lok Lak, a Cambodian dish of marinated beef seasoned with onion and chili sauce. Carmina Fernandez of Madrid's Asadura de Cordero Lecca con Arroz, which sounds far less appealing when translated as "Milk-Fed Lamb Offal with Rice" is probably delicious, though it would have to be adapted to use more readily available organ meats. Maria Luz Fedric of the Cayman Islands contributed a recipe for Honduran Iguana with Rice and Beans that Galimberti suggests could be made with rabbit, but I imagine one could also use chicken; however, if one does run across a stray iguana of the proper size, the directions tell how to clean it and prepare it for cooking. Other dishes, like the Alaskan one for fried moose steak, are interesting only because the meats are exotic; otherwise it's just a piece of meat seasoned with salt and pepper and fried in olive oil with some Worcestershire sauce poured over it on the plate.

The biggest problem I find with this book is that it's like the teaser trailer to a movie, giving just enough information about each of the grandmothers, her life, her culture, and her food, to pique the reader's interest, and then it stops. It's true that Galimberti's visits were brief - in Cambodia he asked his taxi driver if he knew any grandmothers, the driver took him home for dinner, and that was that. And that in itself is a great story, one I'd like to know more about, but it would take more than the space allotted. In fact, the visit with Gnep Tan is one of the more satisfactory episodes, since in it Galimberti paints a somewhat fuller picture of her  and her home than in some of the others. Good food writing, like good travel writing, gives cultural and personal background; it opens a window into another world and gives us the feeling we're there, even if only very briefly. It tells us more than the name of the person, where she lived, what she cooked. It's not as if there wasn't room in the book. The text introducing each recipe occupies roughly just one-quarter of a page, leaving an awful lot of white space. Aesthetically, it looks attractive and artistic, which is not surprising, since the author is primarily a visual artist, but in terms of providing information, it's less than satisfying.

The other problem is that the book isn't terribly well edited. An experienced cook may be able to fill in the gaps and errors in some of the recipes, but a novice might run into trouble. For example, In one recipe he tells the reader to put sweet potatoes and corn on the cob in the pot, but if the reader doesn't turn back to the photograph on a preceding page (since the photographs are not on the pages facing the recipes) she may not remember or realize the sweet potato should be peeled and both it and the corn cobs cut into chunks. In the Kenyan recipe for Mboga and Ugali (White Corn Polenta with Vegetables and Goat), a relatively inexperienced but adventurous cook, one who might decide to try making it with more readily-available lamb (that's what I'm considering), might wonder about soaking the meat in salt water, since the purpose of brining it (though Galimberti does not use that term) is not explained. The greater problem would be that although in his introduction to the recipe Galimberti defines ugali as "a sort of white polenta," i.e., grits, in the recipe itself he calls it "corn flour," an entirely different product that would not produce the desired results. This may be due to the fact that Galimberti is not, apparently, a cook himself, nor does he seem to be familiar with American culinary terminology, in which case he (or his American publisher) should have recognized the need for an editor who knew about such things. 

What I was hoping for when I requested In Her Kitchen from Blogging for Books was something like the old Time-Life Foods of the World series, rich (if necessarily compressed) cultural and personal context coupled with enticing recipes. What arrived was something essentially superficial, although it's undeniably lovely to look at - a great coffee table book, certainly. And I will try some of the recipes. But I probably wouldn't pay $30.00 for it.