Non-Fiction September 30, 2015

‘You Will Eat It,’ by Lori Lynn Turner

Early summer before I turned nine, my father took me to the edge of our property in rural Washington State and positioned a rifle in my arms, pushed the nose of the gun toward the bluff that looked out over the Straits of Juan de Fuca, a stretch of water with a first, middle and last name. I couldn’t see the skull and cross bones tattoo on my father’s left shoulder, but I always knew it was there. My father wasn’t afraid of anything. He adjusted my fingers to shooting position. I pulled the trigger. A chunk of the ground broke up and exploded into the air like a firecracker. My father took the gun from my trembling arms, and then he changed my first name and shoved it up against my middle name, with no room to breathe. LauraLynn wanna try again? he asked. Maybe that’s what he thought my name was or should be. Once my paternal grandmother gave me a necklace with the name “Laura” on it.

No, I told my father. I didn’t want to shoot again. I had killed the earth.

Not long after, one afternoon I rode my magenta colored bicycle back and forth to the end of the asphalt that stopped thick as an oil spill where the driveway ended at the dirt road until it was time to come in for dinner and then I stopped when I saw my father standing in the garage. From a distance the garage seemed safe; its roof a perfect triangle, but when it was used for purposes other than storing a car, it tangled my sense of order. I left my bicycle outside, and heard my father call, LaraLynn come here. I entered the garage. My father pointed a knife at a doe hanging from the rafters. The deer’s legs were tied, its head aimed at the dirt floor, and sliced at its center as if my father had performed a cesarean. Full of kill pride, he motioned for me to come closer, and to get a better view of the dead animal. I stood close enough to the dead animal to pet it. But I didn’t touch it. I knew that pieces of the animal would be fried in a little oil; the juices soiling the pan. The meat tasted like a forkful of dirt and blood from the garage floor.

Early the following spring, my father’s job request transfer, from Washington to Alaska, was approved. It had been his dream, not his family’s, to live in Alaska. The February night we arrived in the 49^th state, it was thirty degrees below zero. I recall descending the steel stairs of the plane. The eerie air a ghostly blanket. It seemed we were walking through a cloud. Silence covered the city, as if all of its inhabitants were gone. Soon I found out every day began and ended in darkness.

In June, as the weather began to warm, my father planned a hunting trip. I watched as he cleaned his rifles. First, he spread out the newspaper on the living room floor. Taking the weapon apart, he placed all of the pieces on the paper, shoved a miniature brush up and down the rifle and twisted it several times. Then he attached cotton squares to the end of the rod and worked them down the barrel. Lastly, my father polished the surface of the gun with a yellow cloth saturated in oil made especially for firearms. The oily metallic scented gun tempted me. Several weeks later, alone in the house, I went into my parents’ room, opened the closet door: my heart beat feverishly as I took my father’s rifle out of its tan padded case. Tenderly, as if it were a baby, I laid the gun on the bedspread. Running my fingers along its wood and metal, I was hypnotized by its sleekness. I stared at the trigger. I knew the gun wasn’t loaded. My father kept the bullets in a worn bullet box somewhere separate from the rifle. I was thrilled and terrified by the gun and what he did with his guns.

One afternoon, my father asked me to go fetch some moose meat for dinner. I went outside, and lifted the wooden door, and descended the stairs to the cellar where the animals and fish my father had caught and killed were stored. I lifted the freezer lid and stared at the hunks of frozen moose, deer, and caribou, wrapped in butcher paper and labeled accordingly, and I couldn’t picture (and I wanted to see them whole) what the animals actually looked like when they were whole, and before they had been killed and skinned and butchered, and in our freezer. But I was wasting time, and my father had told me to fetch the meat. I grabbed a block of moose and brought it into our house and placed it on the cutting board. The ice would slowly melt away and the animal would later become dinner on our plates. There would be blood.

Five years after we moved to Alaska, my father and mother split up, and my father moved out. Once my sister Leigh and I visited our father in his furnished studio apartment, with a tiny kitchen, a bathroom as big as a closet, and a bed that appeared the same size of our twin beds. He offered us a type of sweet we rarely had at home: a package of pink frosted marshmallow cookies. My mom home-baked cookies, pies, and cakes. Back in Washington, we had a bountiful garden: radishes, lettuces, tomatoes, and snap beans. His offering of store-bought cookies was a sad sign of defeat. We’d let him down. None of us shared his adoration of Alaska, his excitement when he found a few specks of gold in his gold pan, or the rush of stalking, shooting, and killing a moose, later shaping it into burgers. That meat tasted like a pair of boots that had tromped through fresh snow, packed snow, dirty snow, yellow snow, exhaust-ridden snow, muddy snow, melting snow, and finally, no more snow.

Quick-to-prepare brand name foods were introduced into our house once my dad was gone. Pop Tarts. Hamburger Helper. Tang. We could eat what we wanted, and I made my own meals. Then I made beef burgers (not moose or caribou) seasoned with salt, pepper, and cinnamon, sweetly scenting the house. I tried to camouflage the taste of meat. But I couldn’t cover up the memories of other things I had had to eat.

I somewhat understood, but didn’t like, that the animals my father hunted and killed became our food. What I didn’t understand, and what still haunts me is something that happened when we lived in Washington. Behind our house we had cages where rabbits and chicken were kept. At times, the chickens and the rabbits were allowed out, and I remember thinking the rabbits were bunnies. Pets. The bunny we called Molly came into the house on occasions. But my father wasn’t raising bunnies. He raised rabbits. I recall once at dinner there was some unrecognizable meat on my plate. I don’t know how I found out it was one of our rabbits (was it Molly?). I knew I had to eat everything on my plate. I ate liver and onions, my least favorite meal. I ate fried oysters, which I then thought tasted like human eyeballs. I drank milk even though it made me gag. I let slimy lima beans slip down my throat.

In my memory, I see myself crying, running from the table, and slamming my bedroom door, which I knew would have resulted in punishment. We weren’t allowed to slam doors. I only slammed doors in my mind. I find it hard to believe my father would have allowed me to leave the table, and I must not have. I knew the rules. I wanted to be brave but I was always afraid. I must have eaten a piece of the bunny. I can’t recall what it tasted like.

Lori Lynn Turner has published in the Brooklyn Rail, Killing the Angel, and The Inquisitive Eater. She recently completed a memoir, It’s in the House, and a novella, Serena’s Home. She is the Associate Director of The New School Writing Program where she also oversees the reading series. Lori Lynn received her MFA in nonfiction from The New School, and B.A. in Creative Writing, focusing on poetry from San Francisco State University.

feature image source.

Non-Fiction July 6, 2015

‘Grandma’s Turtle Soup’ by Danielle Chin

I was four-years-old when I killed a turtle. Paw Paw wanted to make soup.

“It will make Hing Hing strong,” my maternal grandmother said in Cantonese. “Learn from me.”

Everything she said had an assertive tone, as if she had lived and knew it. She would remind Mom that yams and dried orange skin soothed a sore throat, that watercress soup did not only cure tuberculosis, but also made the liver and kidney strong, and that ha foo cho, the Chinese equivalent of an iced tea or a cold beer on the Fourth of July, made you forget the summer heat.

Whenever anything live was involved, I gladly stayed out of the kitchen with my palms pressed tightly against my ears, so I wouldn’t hear the rapid scraping of Paw Paw scaling a fish or the heavy Chinese cleaver cutting through the exoskeleton of a lobster.

When the crisp, cool air turned heavy, signaling the end of spring, Paw Paw planted melons and various types of squash in my parents’ backyard. Each morning she tended to them, cutting the yellowing leaves and stalks, pulling out weeds, and checking and fertilizing the soil. As she gardened, I found ways to amuse myself.

Only a short metal fence separated our garden from the elderly Italian couple’s adjacent to us, however, I felt as if no one could interrupt me while I was there. It was my private space to create whatever world I wanted to inhabit. I could sing, “Jesus Loves Me,” a song that pervaded the house from our cassette player, as loudly as I pleased. I could write my own songs about God; maybe one day another child my age would be singing it too, in her own private yard. Years later, to my great embarrassment, my neighbors told my parents that they had heard every word.

“Your little girl has a beautiful voice.”

“I was off from school one day and heard her from across the street. She sure can sing!”

“Loudly, too!”

The backyard was a magical place for me. Apart from the garden, the ground was made of concrete that was cracked from weathering and Dad’s gold Acura took up a quarter of our side of the yard. We also shared a driveway with our neighbors next door, so there was no partition between our yard and theirs, but during the day, when they weren’t home, I had our yard and their yard all to myself. There, I could be anyone I wanted. I imagined myself a race car driver as I drove around the yard at six miles per hour, the fastest speed the Fisher-Price white and red-striped Corvette convertible Dad bought me could manage, careful not to crash into Dad’s car. Other times, I was a warrior princess who travelled with Lucy, her loyal German Shepherd to seek out and befriend the dragon everyone else feared.

“Wu gui live a very long time, longer than many humans,” Paw Paw said, in Cantonese, taking the turtle out of a red plastic bag and setting it down on the concrete. “You eat this for a long and fruitful life.”

Freed from its plastic prison, the turtle extended its wrinkly neck and head in the air, adjusting to its new environment. It was the first time I had seen a turtle. It wasn’t furry or soft, like the animals I was used to playing with. It had a head, hands, and feet, but only if it felt safe enough to reveal them. Its dark olive carapace glistened under the sunlight like the hood of Dad’s Acura. He’s beautiful, I thought. Perhaps I could sneak him some lettuce when Paw Paw isn’t looking.

“I’ll be right back,” Paw Paw said. “Watch the turtle. Don’t make friends.”

The turtle plodded around slowly, like a newly retired man considering the multitude of options he has to fill his day. It was the only turtle around. Did it know what Paw Paw had planned for it? Did it think it was free?

I wanted to bring it upstairs and set it between Lamb Chop and chubby Danielle Bear, my two favorite toys. I wanted to feel the dips and curves of its armor. I wanted to talk to it and see if its eyes glistened the way Lucy’s did whenever she heard me speak. It would be too slow to run after me, but I wouldn’t have minded having to carry it around.

“Hing Hing,” said Paw Paw, as she handed me a hammer. It was heavy, slightly rusted, and definitely not something anyone should ever give a child. Paw Paw trusted me with it. She trusted me to do what she would have done with it. I looked into her large brown eyes and could almost hear her say, “One day, you will make turtle soup for your family.”

I swung down hard. The weight of the hammer seemed to pull my wrists down involuntarily.

“Guy Hing,” Paw Paw said, encouraging me.

I didn’t think the shell would crack so easily. I didn’t think it would bleed. I didn’t think about the drops of blood on my worn white sandals.

Just one more time, I thought. And it will be over. And I can give Paw Paw back the hammer.

It didn’t cower like a lost puppy behind a dumpster or a child who had just been reprimanded by a parent. Perhaps it was too shocked. It didn’t cry out. He just kept bleeding.

“I was cleaning my apartment and found a box of your mom’s recipes,” Gung Gung asked Mom a few years ago. “Do you want them?”

“I don’t have room for them,” Mom said. “Keep them at the apartment.”

Over the years, after many spring cleanings and new home health aides, the recipes disappeared or were accidentally discarded. Forgotten like a brief childhood friendship or an awkward kiss, until the first early morning wind of spring or someone’s sweaty palm reminds you.

One night, Mom called Gung Gung to ask him if he could bring the recipes to our weekly weekend brunch. She wanted to make lin gou, a traditional Chinese New Year cake made of sweet glutinous rice and brown sugar. In Mandarin, it is called nian gao. Nian, which means “sticky” sounds like the word for “year” and gao, the word for “cake” sounds similar to the word for “tall.” Every dish served on Chinese New Year is symbolic. Lin gou or nian gao suggested that whoever ate the dessert would grow or prosper with the coming year. Though she never made the cake from scratch, she never forgot how Paw Paw used the back of a Chinese cleaver to break rectangular blocks of brown sugar or the hint of citrus in her lin gou.

When it comes to preparing for Chinese New Year, I do the minimal. I vacuum and sweep the floor clean of the dust particles and fur from Coco, our brindle Bulldog. I clean the crystal glasses, set the table, and light Mom’s favorite hydrangea candles. I rarely ever help Mom cook for the celebration dinner. Something else always requires my attention: homework; a group project; a novel and a response paper I must finish for class.

Every year, Mom and I fill red envelopes with crisp dollar bills or silver dollars and put them in every room of the apartment and between the oranges and in the fruit bowls. During the holiday, Mom adorns the apartment with gladioli, Fu gui jook, a plant with pointed leaves protruding from a long, green, crunchy stem, tiger lilies, red roses, and red carnations.

“Learn from me, Danielle,” Mom says. “Flowers add elegance to a room.”

When Mom was a child in Hong Kong, a magnificent flower market opened in preparation for the New Year. Hundreds of flowers and plants, azaleas, red peonies, violet hyacinths, pussy willows were on display to be admired and sold. Mom savored her walks through the market, inhaling the bundles of clustered hyacinth flowers that smelled slightly powdery and so sweet like a dessert too indulgent to eat alone.

As a child, I was always excited to receive red envelopes from relatives and family friends filled with money. As I grew older, the holiday became tedious. I remember Dad making multiple trips by car to bring all the groceries and flowers from the supermarket back to the house. Somehow, there was always one more thing we needed from the store: a couple cans of abalone; a bag of jasmine rice, particularly the one with the elephant on it; oyster sauce, without the monosodium glutamate.

“You must carry on these traditions,” Mom says every year. “You must be proud of your heritage.”

Bowls of gut, tangerines with long stems and leaves still intact sat on surfaces on the dining room table, computer desk, and windowsill.

“Remember, always have a lot of leafy gut,” Mom reminds me. “The fruit signifies happiness and the leaves represent long life.”

We never ate them and we threw them away once they started to rot.

During dinner, I gladly consumed the meals Mom prepared: Cantonese-style lobsters, chopped and fried with its own tomalley, minced pork, garlic, and scallions; a whole poached flounder; “longevity” noodles; a greasy roast duck; and a whole steamed gāi or chicken with a red date in its mouth.

“Paw Paw always said, ‘Put a sweet red date in the chicken’s mouth,” Mom reminded me, “’for when the soul reaches heaven, it will talk about you sweetly.’”

I enjoy cooking when I am making stuffed mushrooms, Fusilli alla Caprese, or a baked dessert. But I am not brave the way Mom became after Paw Paw’s death. Mom learned to scrape the scales from a fish, remove the innards from a fish or poultry, and cook a crab or lobster live.

Perhaps the turtle trusted me the way Paw Paw trusted me to carry on the traditions of my Chinese heritage, the way Mom trusts me to do in the future.

Some people cut off the head of a turtle while it’s still alive, but I’ve heard it’s a slow death. The mouth might still snap and its body might still attempt to get away. Some boil the shell with the soup, if it’s a soft-shell turtle. After removing the turtle from the shell, pulling out its nails and bones, some barbeque it on a grill or cover the meat in batter and fry it like a chicken cutlet. I’ve heard it’s delicious braised, fried to a light golden brown with wine, soy sauce, lard, and pork. But Paw Paw would say, “The most nutritious way to eat a turtle is in soup.”

Paw Paw washed the turtle in hot water. It seemed to bleed all over again as she removed pieces of the now broken shell. Using a knife, she separated the limbs from its shell, cut out the rest of the meat, and gutted the turtle. Rolling back the rough, scaly skin, Paw Paw swiftly scraped out the fat. I imagined this is what would have happened to the dragon if Lucy and I hadn’t befriended it.

Paw Paw let me have the first bowl, before my parents came home for dinner.

“Drink it to the last drop,” Paw Paw said, her loose paisley blouse smelling slightly of mothballs. “The weather is warm; this will cool your body. It is good for your kidneys and will make Hing Hing’s nails and bones strong.”

I looked into my bowl. Dried longan, red dates, ginger, sweet gogi berries, and small roots of a plant I did not know the name of floated alongside the meat. I spooned a piece of sea cucumber into my mouth. They looked and felt slimy but had a gelatinous texture that I always enjoyed.

“Ai-yaa!” cried Paw Paw. “Hing Hing must try the turtle. We must always be grateful for the animals we eat. They gave their lives for us. Never waste your food.”

I could hear the sound the hammer made as it collided with the turtle’s armor. I could smell its blood, as it seeped through the cracks in its shell. I gathered all the turtle meat in my bowl onto the spoon. I only wanted to try it once. It was unexpectedly tender and easy to swallow.

Although I’ve only had turtle soup once, guīlínggāo or turtle jelly is a dessert I’ve savored consistently throughout my life. Alone, guīlínggāo, which is made from the powdered plastron of turtles, herbs, and flowers, is bitter. But pour some simple syrup or honey on its shiny surface and each spoonful becomes perfectly sweetened. I loved the slight licorice taste and feeling the coolness of the black jelly sliding down my esophagus, especially on a hot August afternoon.

In ancient China, only the emperors, empresses, and nobility were allowed to consume guīlínggāo. Originally invented in Wuzhou, legend says it kept thousands of soldiers healthy during battle and cured diseases, such as smallpox. The nutrients from the turtle plastrons and herbal medicine made it popular in revitalizing the body of its energy, regulating the digestive system, treating heat-stroke, and improving the complexion of the skin. Centuries later, it has become commercially available in Chinese supermarkets around the world as well as added to Asian desserts, though it is no longer made with powdered plastron.

As a child, I would have been embarrassed to eat guīlínggāo outside of my house, with my non-Asian friends. Once, to drink a box of soymilk I brought from home, I bent my head down into my backpack instead of taking it out so my classmates wouldn’t be able to see the Chinese writing on the package.

I wanted my classmates to think of me as the girl whose dad baked layers of cheesy meat lasagnas, fried squab, and macaroni and cheese. As the girl whose aunt taught her how to make the tallest stuffed mushrooms. As the girl whose mother made macaroni salad with raisins and cooked salmon with a side of asparagus marinated in butter for dinner. Kids younger than I was called me “chink” as they rode beside me in yellow school buses. Classmates called me “boat girl,” as if I had travelled to their beloved Brooklyn all the way from China wearing a pointed straw hat. I didn’t want to be asked, “What kind of Asian are you? How do you not have an accent? Why do you speak English so well?” Or told, “You’re pretty; you must be Japanese or Korean.” Or take quiet pleasure whenever someone called me “the cool Asian.” I didn’t want my classmates to think I was cool only when my parents gave me shrimp chips, pork buns, and red envelopes to hand out to the class during Chinese New Year.

After Paw Paw died when I was eight years old, I rarely spoke Cantonese and eventually forgot how to. Though I can recognize simple phrases and words, I can no longer carry on a conversation. In my last year of undergraduate studies, I took two Mandarin classes and became one of the top students in the class. I could recognize the simplified versions of the Chinese characters as well as speak and respond to basic conversation topics. However, by not practicing, I have lost these abilities too. I believe language is the bloodline of a person’s heritage and ancestry. It is not the eyes or jawline you inherit from your mother, grandmother, and great-grandfather that connects you to your heritage, but something intimate, such as a common language or a shared recipe.

Now, it is Mom who tells me that chicken and pig feet help your skin produce collagen, to make your skin firm so even when you’ve aged, your cheeks will feel like the calves of a baby. That eating a week’s worth of fuzzy gourd or jeet gua boiled with flavorful chunks of salted pork and a whole chicken will give you weeks of clear, blemish-free skin. It is Mom who peels the skin and dices the jeet gua and boils the soup before changing into her pajamas after a long day of work so there would be a hot bowl of soup ready for me by the time I get home from school. It is Mom who will boil sweet potatoes with pieces of chén pí or dried, aromatic tangerine skin for your pharyngitis, when gargling with salted water still hasn’t made swallowing any easier.

Paw Paw grew up without parents to teach her how to be brave enough to continue her Chinese traditions in a foreign land. It is not enough to remember that the red date goes between the beak of a whole chicken or that it is imperative to have leftovers during Chinese New Year to suggest that you and your family will always have more than enough to eat. It is not enough to make sure the gut still have their leaves as you arrange them around the house or to remember to take a bite into lin gou or steaming glutinous tāngyuán filled with black sesame after the New Year dinner so your future will always be sweet. Maintaining the traditions of your heritage means being willing to wield that hammer. Sometimes, I can’t help but think killing that turtle for Paw Paw’s soup is the closest to my heritage I’ll ever get.

Danielle Elizabeth Chin has published articles on The Best American Poetry Blog and an original song on Side B Magazine. She received an Honorable Mention from the American Literary Merit Award in 2013 and The John Costello Award for Creative Nonfiction in 2012. At Marymount Manhattan College, she served as Chapter President of Sigma Tau Delta and is also a member of Omicron Delta Kappa and Alpha Chi Honor Societies. She has an MFA in creative writing from The New School, where she has worked as a T.A. for Sigrid Nunez and a R.A. for David Lehman.

Non-Fiction April 11, 2015

‘The Lamb’ by Demetri Raftopoulos

We arrive at St. Paul’s Cathedral for the Anastasi around 11:30 to honor Christ’s resurrection. My mother buys the lambadas, candles that signify the light of God. Muffled whispers turn to loud conversation as more flavorful Greeks saturate empty spaces of grass outside the church. I take the lambada unwillingly from my mother’s hand and stand in between my father and my sister. A little before midnight, the priest and his crew of clergymen join us outside. They hold crosses, relics, and a model of post-crucified Jesus. Talking ceases, candles are lit and at midnight everyone sings, “Christos Anesti, ek nekron, thanaton tha…na…ton, Christ has risen from the dead, from the dead, from…the…dead,” crossing themselves with the lambada. I don’t.

I’m not religious. I know how that sounds – cliché, redundant, overheard – but I’m not. It’s not like I lost my faith. I just never hit it off with Him. The rare times you can find me sitting, and reluctantly kneeling and standing in between two pews, I’m strictly thinking about the piece of bread the altar boys give out at the end of the service. Especially during the give us this day our daily bread segment of the Lord’s Prayer. Yeah. Give it to us. And especially during the Anastasi, all I want is for it to finish so I can go eat.

I wake up at 8:30 in the morning and meet my baba in the garage. The man is sporting his usual black sweatpants, and a tucked in white thermal. Headphones are plugged into his ears. His signature look.

“Grab that end of the arne!” My father yells to help him with the lamb as if I wasn’t right next to him. He still thinks he has to shout over the music in his headphones.

“Okay!” I yell back.

We carry the arne through my family room and open the sliding door to my backyard. The strumming of a bouzouki and abrasive stringing of a lira break free from his headphones. I feel the heat of the charcoal that my father has already lit and the smoke from the fire escapes into the crisp, spring morning. We hook each end of the spit onto the mechanized cooker. The chord is plugged in and the lamb starts rotating.

“Poor guy,” I say, my eyes fixated on the animal.

“What! Ti eipes?” My father shouts again.

I don’t respond. Not because I feel like he wouldn’t understand the sympathy I feel for the lamb but because he wouldn’t hear me anyway. I look back before going inside.

My father is hypnotized by the spinning lamb, his head circling with each rotation. He claps his hands, rubs them together and licks his lips like Sylvester seeing Tweety.

“Oh baby! Can’t wait until it’s ready,” he exclaims, his hands separate and one finds its way to his belly, more rubbing. His stomach doesn’t allow compassion.

Hours later, the smell of cooked lamb infiltrates the smoke from the grill, seeping its way up and down Edgewood Drive. I stand on my deck and throw the souvlakia on the barbeque, crack open a Mythos and wait for more family to arrive. The pita bread toasts above the souvlakia and the fire hisses with each splash of oregano, lemon, salt and pepper on the cooking meat. I look over my shoulder at my father standing beside the big, rotating, succulent, seasoned 24-pound lamb down the stairs of my deck.

Despite my earlier commiseration, I stare at the lamb as if I want to put it between two pieces of pita and eat the entire thing in one big sandwich. A couple years ago, we decided against the rotisserie and simply barbecued like it was a regular Sunday. It didn’t feel right. My family has so many memories attached to the food we eat, stories for days about our experiences with the animal. The lamb is the center of our tradition, along with the rest of the tasty food in my kitchen waiting to be devoured. Taking the lamb out of Easter would be like forgetting the memories.

My sister’s fiancé, a non-Greek, once ate a lamb eyeball. The guy simply popped it into his mouth like it was the first M&M in the bag. Everybody gathered around with their iPhones to document the first-time-ever moment.

“Tastes like chicken,” he said, effortlessly chewing the remnants of the eyeball.

That same year, my ex-girlfriend, another non-Greek, could not stand anywhere near the lamb while the rest of the salivating Greeks at my house huddled around the revolving arne. It was her favorite animal, obviously not to eat, but to cuddle up against in stuffed animal form. I secretly told all my relatives and each one tried to get her to come see the arne. A symphony of laughter usually followed.

During one of my teenage years, my theo approached me, “try this,” he said, handing me a fork with a pink piece of meat stuck to it, “it’s the thigh.” I remember how mushy it was, how gamy with each slow, uneasy bite, and how quickly I wanted to forget the taste. “What was it really?” I asked my uncle, searching for other food to mask the taste. He smiled. “The kidney.”

The spit has almost stopped working before, only to be resurrected by the crafty hands of my papou. Our supply of charcoal depleted once, awakening a typical fight between my pops and me over who was supposed to buy extra only to be amended over the clanking of two beers and teeth sinking into meat. We smash red, hard boiled eggs against one another, a game I remember playing when the lamb was monstrous compared to my tiny body. If your egg stays unbroken, you find another person’s to compete with who was just as fortunate to still have a surviving egg. The person whose egg remains unblemished wins.

After years of expressed desire from our parents to marry Greek, my sister and I both brought xseni, or foreigners, to Easter. Both were welcomed with the same love by the family who passes me a tray of stuffed grape leaves across the table. Love of permanence. Not that the lamb solely ushered them into the family, but Easter for Greeks is celebrated like Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The nationalites of our significant others were not presented among the plates of food on the table on my backyard’s deck, open for consumption. I was so used to listening and learning about the complex, tight-knit circle of the Greek Orthodox community. My family now yanked open our oven and unexpectedly began cooking dishes infused with new ingredients.

It’s the flickering flame of the lambada, the echoing eruption of song during the Anastasi, the savory soup that warms our bellies, the colliding cracking of egg shells, but it’s most importantly the lamb everyone comes to see that makes Easter special. The lamb gives my family these stories to tell, bringing everybody together to listen.

Look. I have nothing against religion. I know I don’t cross myself with the lambada or sing when I’m supposed to. But I’ve kept theology out of the kitchen, separate from my culture. “Come on re Demetri, but you’re Greek,” people tell me after hearing how I’ve sinned. Being Greek is looking across the table, filled with Greek food, at my family. Religion is tough to digest. Tradition goes down easier.

Demetri Raftopoulos is a young writer currently receiving his MFA in Creative Writing at The New School, where he is the program’s event and chapbook coordinator. His writing has appeared in Critical Mass: The Blog of the National Book Critics Circle, The Ink and Code, Thought Catalog, and Sports of New York. He resides in Long Island, with his parents.

Non-Fiction March 31, 2015

‘The Next Course’ by Jen Huh

The Next Course

Father spoke little, and never explained much, but he loved to eat and talk of food. He appreciated taste more than touch. I think that he felt more secure in the texture of food in the mouth than in the texture of words dispelled from his lips. Father loved to talk about eating, but never talked while eating, chomping on pan-fried chicken gizzards and skewered red meats. He preferred eating with chopsticks. Next best was the fork. Hands were the least favorable. Wiping the filth only does so much.

Now, I guess the smell or color of what was left behind alters the taste of the next course.

I am a good offshoot, a strong bud that grew into a woman with her own tastes. When eating in public, I prefer foods with limited crumb capacity, held by only two fingers and eaten within two bites. Between you and me, big sandwiches are my favorite. I love the weight and feel of food in my hands. I am very particular on bread density and crustiness…baguettes, of course. I like the chew of the bread and the biting action and sound…hromp, nam, nam, nam.

I am in love with a fella with a great, gray beard. He prefers the softness of a Portuguese roll. He eats with his hands and crumbs fall in the gray hairs. He shares his salmon dinner with his old Chihuahua…pinching a morsel from his mouth and dropping it into the little dog’s mouth. I look at him with my look of ‘what?’ He explains. But, he’s my friend as his fingers, wet with fish and saliva, pick off another bit.

Jen Huh is an artist, designer, and poet, whose practice focuses on concept development and blending humor, text/typography, fine arts and product design. Jen has earned an MFA Degree in Creative Writing with a concentration in Poetry from the New School and has worked as a teaching artist in the New York public schools. She currently works as the Assistant Director of Advising, guiding students in the BFA programs at Parsons The New School for Design.

Non-Fiction February 27, 2015

TIE Poet of the Month: ‘On Hunger,’ by TJ Jarrett

On Hunger

By TJ Jarrett

Over dinner one night, I said to the man: I feel this could go on forever, you and me in white tablecloth restaurants in some state of want.

And the man said: I love you, which I knew to be untrue.

I said: You know what your problem is—you’ve always loved wanting more than having. By which I meant our problem and the cause of the dinner in the white tablecloth restaurant and what had become one of the ceremonies of our discontent.

He reached across the table with a pulpy open hand and said it again: I love you. I fell silent.

I thought I was having some epiphany on what hunger was. I tried to explain this to the man. I told him the story of that weekend I left for New Orleans without telling him and came back via Meridian to see my grandmother on a Sunday afternoon. She made minute steaks and gravy and sticky rice and we ate together with few words and I held her hand so long she asked to have it back again. I was so hungry, I said, and I didn’t know that I was until she fed me.

The man leaned back. I thought you hated your grandmother.

I reached toward him, put my hand over his, asked: Why is love so endlessly complicated? I’m trying to say I can be satisfied.

Years later, I was in a bar. It well lit with globe drop lights, the stools a cheery yellow and the bar a thick polished white marble. The bartender steered me toward a peaty 18 year single malt. I was waiting for someone. The man was there. We hadn’t spoken in ten years. The man lived in a new town and the fault for not speaking was mine alone. I stared into my scotch and furtively looked in his direction as if he would dissipate like fog.

My companion arrived and the hostess steered us into the long dark restaurant. The busboys were changing the linen and it fell to the table like a sail when all the air lets out. My date asked if I was looking forward to our meal and I said yes. Yes. And I kept my eyes forward and strained to focus on what was right in front of me. The plates. The glasses rising up like soldiers. The clink and glint of knives and spoons.

TJ Jarrett is a writer and software developer in Nashville, Tennessee. Her recent work has been published or is forthcoming in Poetry, African American Review, Boston Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Callaloo, DIAGRAM, Third Coast, VQR, West Branch and others. She has earned scholarships from Colrain Manuscript Conference and Vermont Studio Center; fellowships from Sewanee Writer’s Conference 2014 and the Summer Literary Seminars 2012 and 2014; the 2014 VQR Emily Clark Balch Prize for Poetry, a runner up for the 2012 Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize and 2012 New Issues Poetry Prize; and her collection The Moon Looks Down and Laughs was selected as a finalist for the 2010 Tampa Review Prize for Poetry. Her debut collection Ain’t No Grave (finalist for the 2013 Balcones Prize and the 2014 Debulitzer Prize) is published with New Issues Press (2013). Her second collection Zion (winner of the Crab Orchard Open Competition 2013) was published by Southern Illinois University Press in the fall of 2014

Non-Fiction October 29, 2014

‘Mystical Materialism: Cargo Cults, Food Riots, Disease and the Political Function of Food,’ by Dan Hoy

I have an anxious and highly ambivalent relationship with food. This is informed by a thoroughly demoralizing struggle with digestive disease dating back to early childhood, and in my adult life with an evolving awareness of how political power is derived out of the universal need to eat. I don’t think it’s simplifying things too much to say that food is the terrain of struggle, of our bodies and our lives. So it is with some trepidation that I approach a topic that refracts for me in such a charged and diffuse manner, and with such interrelated complications.

The problem, as it were, begins with the surrender of the power to grow our own food, and the image that crystalizes this for me is that of the cargo cults of the South Pacific forsaking their lineage of independent subsistence in favor of ritualized dependence on some impersonal, heavenly power.

The cargo cult phenomenon emerged among indigenous Melanesian populations during World War II as a result of another phenomenon, that of military supply containers dropping out of the sky to support U.S. troops on the ground. The islanders saw photographic evidence of a bountiful life of leisure in American magazines, witnessed uniformed men laying down airstrips instead of crop fields and invoking cargo-bearing planes with radio transmitters rather than cultivating the land, and translated this into religious iconography:

The basic premise of the cargo cult is that tribal ancestors, the foundation of the islanders’ indigenous religions, are the source of all the material possessions which are now being controlled by the whites. In order to redirect the flow of this cargo back to its rightful recipients, certain rituals must be enacted to mollify the ancestors. These actions have often included ceasing all productive work and destroying crops and pigs to demonstrate sincere belief in the imminent arrival of the cargo. [from Stuart Swezey, “Cargo Cult” introduction, Amok Journal (1995)]

This kind of mystical materialism has obvious parallels with consumerism, but it’s also relevant on a more encompassing scale. I’m thinking specifically of industrial civilization’s occulting process that divests the populace of the knowledge of food production in exchange for subjugation and consumer goods, e.g. instead of gathering water from the sky or ground, or food from the earth, people perform symbolically empty rituals for forty-some-odd hours per week in order to induce water to fall from the faucet and food to spontaneously manifest in grocery aisles.

One could argue this transition away from individual and community ownership of food production is not an incidental result or necessity of societal evolution, but a strategic maneuver that enlarges the range of population control by several orders of magnitude. There’s a quote that’s been attributed to Henry Kissinger that’s probably bullshit but no less true to the world in which we live: “Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”

Let’s set aside energy and money and just focus on food here, going all the way back to the beginning. In its Edenic form, human work is the work of human subsistence, and the technology of our work is water, sunlight, earth, seeds and time. This is the foundational technology of human life and all forms of civilization, and it is this technology that industrial civilization obscures and replaces with the mechanisms of its own survival. What many of us call “work” today is what we do instead of work – a mediating activity that slight-of-handly naturalizes the daily sacrifice of our bodies and time, and allows the intrinsic value of our labor to be siphoned off, at variable speeds and volume, so it can be reallocated in systems that support neither our values nor self-preservation.

Narratives are key to this obscuring or occulting process, whether it’s straight up myths like that of teleological progress and the corresponding superiority of the present over the past, or more embedded lexical maneuvers like the application of the term “laws” to the physical structure of the universe (2^nd law of thermodynamics, etc.) as a way of reflecting back and infusing arbitrary human laws with a sense of the natural and immutable.

With regard to the probably fake Kissinger quote above, the second step in controlling the people via food (after erasing personal ownership of its production from cultural messaging) is to drain food of its functional purpose and give it a narrative purpose instead: people eat first of all because it delivers a cultural experience, as evidenced by every single advertisement ever; food as a vehicle of nutrient delivery is a secondary consideration, or value add. This step enables the third step to occur without remorse, which is to drain food of its nutritional value: what is now labeled “food” is often, functionally speaking, garbage or poison. The benefit of this step is twofold: “food” can be produced and distributed more cost-effectively and with greater mechanized efficiency than food (at least within current, petroleum-based world systems), and the compound physiological damage caused by ingestion of “food” products over time systematically converts people into assets that can be squeezed by the health care industry.

I can attest to the efficacy of this strategy first hand. I had my first bowel surgery when I was 18. I’ve had a few more since then. The first was a colectomy in response to repeated hospitalizations for ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory disease of the large intestine. The rest were emergency surgeries for small bowel obstructions caused by an overgrowth of scar tissue from the initial surgery, and then scar tissue from each subsequent surgery, ad infinitum. In between surgeries I developed migraines and fibromyalgia. I received iron infusion therapy and occasional blood transfusions over a period of ten years for severe, chronic anemia. I had a pulmonary embolism at age 33. Presumably, all of this is symptomatic of an underlying autoimmune disorder conditioned by an unfortunate mix of genetic predispositions and environmental inputs. The most significant input? Food, or more precisely, “food.”

At this point (age 37), I try to avoid gluten, dairy, sugar additives, soy, nightshades, genetically modified foods, fluoridated water and anything else that’s been documented or rumored to trigger an inflammatory response in susceptible physiologies, and I eat minimally processed, organically grown food wherever possible. I also follow a fairly aggressive supplement regimen to address the absorption deficiencies of my reconstituted digestive system, and recently underwent an intensive, specialized form of physical therapy designed to soften and loosen the surgical adhesions entangling my insides.

As can be surmised from the above, keeping me alive has been an expensive and labor-intensive process. Like war, chronic illness is a racket.

What happened to me, the consequences of which are still happening, was systemic bodily collapse due in part to a deficiency of real food. The same thing happens to political bodies. There are studies out there that correlate riots and revolts with the price or availability of food, as noted in the following from Scientific American (by way of Chris Martenson’s Peak Prosperity site):

The surging cost of grain throughout the Middle East, along with Tunisian fruit and vegetable vendor Mohammed Bouazizi setting himself on fire on December 17, 2010, are frequently cited as factors contributing to the Arab Spring. Four days prior to Bouazizi’s self immolation, [Dr. Yaneer] Bar-Yam and his NECSI colleagues submitted an analysis that highlighted the risks of rising food prices and anticipated an event like the Arab Spring. Their research included a model built using data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s Food Price Index, a measure that maps monthly changes in international food costs. The model found the likelihood for rioting increased when the index reached above 210.

On the graph below, the black dots are food prices and the vertical red lines are riots (with death tolls in parentheses); they show the index exceeded 210 during the food crises of both the 2008 and 2011.

Source: NECSI, “The Food Crises and Political Instability in North Africa and the Middle East” (2011), via Scientific American

For the aspiring Kissingers of the world, the key takeaway is that people will put up with just about anything except starvation. All other degradations, such as oppression, enslavement, and killing their friends, are probably acceptable. This insight already pervades our networks of surveillance and control, as evidenced in this photo from an April 2010 joint exercise by the Anchorage Police and the Alaska Army National Guard, in which sex, booze, hoodies and food are staged in all of their obvious illegality — but it is the unambiguous declaration of hunger in broad daylight (a “FOOD NOW!” sign) that is truly blasphemous and deserving of excessive, armed response:

U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Brian E. Christiansen, North Carolina National Guard. Source: Public Intelligence, “Vigilant Guard 2010 Riot Control, Detention Drills” (2010)

Those of us with more modest, un-Kissinger aspirations must look elsewhere for models of how to live life on a planet like this. My layperson recommendation is currently permaculture, a life practice grounded in sustainable efficiency and patterned after natural, regenerative systems. Short for “permanent culture” and focused on establishing exactly that, its core tenets are care for the earth, care for the people, and care for the future (or return of surplus, converting profit and waste back into the system). The term was coined in 1976 by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in their article A Permaculture System for Southern Australian Conditions, and popularized worldwide as an approach to developing sustainable human habitats, with an emphasis on integrated food production. Mollison describes it as “a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system.”

Developed in response to the Anthropocene’s history and apparent endgame, permaculture accounts for the big systemic risks we face today, what philosopher Slavoj Žižek calls the four horsemen of the apocalypse: our escalating ecological, technological, economic and socio-political catastrophes. It also addresses what’s implicit in Žižek’s allusion to The Book of Revelation: our collective spiritual crisis. I was exposed to the principles and applications of permaculture this summer at an ecovillage in the temperate rainforests of North Carolina, where I lived off-grid and learned about foraging and forest gardening, rainwater harvesting, dry stack masonry, sheet mulching, humanure and the like. The goal is to minimize energy inputs, foster synergies and produce no waste; waste just means you haven’t optimized your system properly, or as Buckminster Fuller says, “Pollution is nothing but the resources we aren’t harvesting” – a quote affixed to the wall of an outdoor composting toilet at the ecovillage. Handbooks like the Toolbox for Sustainable City Living and in-progress civic projects like The Plant (a former meatpacking facility in Chicago converted into a vertical farm, educational center and food business incubator with on-site energy production) demonstrate the viability of this vision even in urban areas.

I say all this not as an expert (I’m barely an amateur) but as someone who’s had, like most people on this planet, a hard time here. Our globalizing civilization and its cultural narratives are engineered to convince people that acting like self-destructive aliens is our natural mode of being. Our bodies and spirit attest otherwise. Reclamation of the food production cycle, by individuals and local communities, is the most fundamental step we can take toward a rehabilitated present and a future that has a future. Tending and eating from a food garden is at once a political act, a strategy of risk mitigation, and an embodiment of our core functionality. In lieu of something useful like a list of common companion plants for your regional climate, I’ll leave you with a poem:

The human
condition

is what denial

of the human
function

looks like.

The Earth
bends to

the will of the Sun.

Dan Hoy is the author of The Deathbed Editions (Octopus Books, forthcoming 2015), Omegachurch (Solar Luxuriance, 2010), Glory Hole (Mal-O-Mar, 2009) and other collections. He is an ongoing contributor to the multidisciplinary blog Montevidayo, and his personal website is The Pin-Up Stakes.

Featured image via Wikimedia Commons.

Art & Text September 3, 2014

Stan’s Madeleine

Consider the Lobster. © Anna Cypra Oliver 2014. Oil on canvas 18″x20″.

Stan’s Madeleine

By
Anna Cypra Oliver

Haut-cuisine extravaganzas like Plaza-Athéneé Lobster Soufflé are not usually my thing, either as a diner or as a cook—too rich, too fattening, too much of a production—but when my neighbor Stan and I attempted to make it one New Year’s Day and failed, it haunted me. The soufflé lurked out there, along with the perfect rye bread and a Kosher dill that mimicked the exact taste and texture of a Guss’ Pickles pickle, in the deep pool of unrealized cooking dreams, just beyond reach. Besides, Stan, whose disappointment was much keener than mine, claimed it was one of the best things he’d ever eaten.

Stan was an accomplished home cook and for many years, Plaza-Athéneé Lobster Soufflé had been his specialty. He had promised several times to make it for my husband Stephan and me, but each time we came to dinner with Stan and his wife, Leslie, the dish failed to appear. He baked delicate gougères, a beautiful whole red snapper with herbs, a gorgeous rosemary encrusted leg of lamb, but no soufflé. Finally, during a dinner at our house, he had to admit that he couldn’t do it. Already in his late eighties, he found it increasingly difficult to make any of the elaborate dishes he used to execute with ease. The lobster soufflé required too many steps, beginning with killing, cutting up and cooking the lobsters, and took too many hours—three, at least—for him to contemplate.

Stan looked chagrined after his confession, obviously embarrassed to have to acknowledge that he was too old for the job. That’s when, impulsively, I suggested that we make it together. I had never made a soufflé and would get a lesson in how to do it. Stan would get the aid of my hands. I would be his sous-chef and do all the clean-up, enabling him to concentrate his energy on cooking. Together, surely, we could manage.

Stan emailed me a copy of his recipe, his shopping list of ingredients penciled in a column down one side. I would make sure we had everything we needed on hand: two lobsters, a carrot, an onion, chives, parsley, Cognac, dry white wine, heavy cream, dry sherry, butter, flour, eggs, and parmesan cheese. I read the sheet over once, twice, a third time, trying to fix an outline of the many steps in my mind. It was the sort of recipe that had to be executed quickly, without hesitation: fall behind and the cream would boil over while the butter burned.

It also seemed to have a mistake embedded in it, or at least a sentence that would yield no obvious sense, no matter how many times I read it. Sauté the chopped up lobsters in “hot salad oil,” add them to the mirepoix (finely chopped carrot, onion, chives and parsley sautéd in butter), along with paprika, some Cognac, half a cup of dry white wine and a cup of heavy cream, then cook the mixture for eighteen to twenty minutes. Remove the lobster pieces and “reduce the liquid remaining in the pan to about ½ the original quantity. Add 1 cup cream sauce and 3 tablespoons each of heavy cream and dry Sherry.” Add cream sauce to the liquid in the pan, a liquid already laden with cream? What cream sauce? I could see that Stan was confused, too, since his list included the notation “1 cup cream sauce?”

As soon as Stan and Leslie arrived, Stan and I headed into the kitchen to confer on the recipe, trying together to decipher that opaque bit about the cream sauce. We agreed that it must mean the cream sauce made from sautéing the lobster, since there was no other. What it was being added to remained a mystery, but the essential point seemed to be that it should be strained and then divided between the pan and a gravy boat, so that some of the cream sauce would be poured over the lobster pieces at the base of the soufflé and some would be reserved to top off at the table. Just to be certain I checked some of my other cookbooks. Sure enough, there it was: Lobster Plaza Athéneé, in Jacques Pépin’s most recent cookbook, The Essential Pépin. But his recipe was completely different, most notably in regard to the lobster sauce itself, which it said should be served on the side of a separately made cheese soufflé. “Oh, no,” Stan said. “The lobster has to go at the bottom of the pan. I remember that distinctly. You cut through the crown of the soufflé and out comes this gorgeous lobster sauce. That’s what makes it so spectacular.”

Stan had long since forgotten where he found his recipe, a photocopy with no author or cookbook title printed on it, but what he did know was that he had first tasted that particular soufflé in the lavish gold and white dining room of the Hôtel Plaza Athéneé itself. When I asked, he announced the date, 1969, with a certainty that suggested the significance of the memory and then would say no more, giving me a sly, cat-who-ate-the canary smile. A woman, his smile said, a beautiful woman, most likely, in Paris when he was still almost young. The image of her and of the day they dined under the chandeliers of the grand salon was so obviously fresh in his mind that when he spoke of the experience—or wouldn’t— Leslie, who came into his life well after 1969, flashed her own significant, mostly indulgent smile and rolled her eyes. Still, clear as it seemed to be, I wondered which was right, his memory or Jacques Pépin’s recipe, since Pépin noted in his lead paragraph that he had worked at the Plaza Athéneé in the 1950s and had learned to make the dish in its kitchens. But this was Stan’s show. I would defer to him. And it did sound more spectacular to do it his way.

Leaving our spouses to sit in front of the living room fire, we poured ourselves glasses of the lovely dry Riesling Stan had brought, donned aprons and got to work. Everything went well at first. Stan glanced at the small mound of carrots I’d chopped for the mirepoix and gave a nod of satisfaction: I’d do fine as a sous-chef. In the middle of my suggesting that I call Stephan in to kill the two extremely hard-shell two-pound lobsters, Stan took my butcher knife from the rack, smacked a lobster onto a cutting board and in one sharp downward motion crunched the blade lengthwise through its head. No need, then, I thought, of any extra help. Stan deftly removed the legs and tail from the carapace, unperturbed by the way the creature continued to thrash and twitch—with its brain stem cleaved in half, it was, presumably, dead. After the pieces had simmered in cream, he laboriously picked every bit of meat from the shells.

Half-way through the preparation, Stan said he needed to take a break. It seemed a good stopping point: the lobster was resting in its sauce; the next step would be to make the soufflé. We sat with Stephan and Leslie, sipping wine and savoring the tarragon Oysters Rockefeller that I’d prepared as an appetizer. About half an hour later, Stan set down his glass and said, “I’m ready.” Then he marched into the kitchen. Eggs needed to be separated, egg whites whipped until stiff, Parmesan grated, the soufflé pan buttered, and the lobster sauce reheated, but before I’d had a chance to do any of this prep work Stan was already at the stove, making a roux and blending it with hot milk. I rushed to catch up with him, getting the eggs ready only seconds before he reached a hand out for the bowl of yolks. It was then, between one gesture and the next, that Plaza-Athéneé Lobster Soufflé slipped the hook and sank without a thrash into private legend, one of the big ones that got away. Before I could read the final, complicated steps one last time, Stan poured the mix of roux, hot milk, egg yolks, folded egg whites and cheese into the soufflé pan. Then he added the lobster and its sauce to the dish. A moment later, he stopped dead, looked at the pan, looked at me, shook his head. “What have I done?” he asked. The lobster, of course, as his memory and our cross-checking had verified, should have gone at the bottom of the pan, not on top. Weighted down with all that cream and shellfish, the egg mixture would never rise.

Stan looked stricken: even with my help, he couldn’t manage. My own face flushed red, as if the mistake were mine. And in a way, it was. I felt terrible for having pushed him to do something he’d already known was beyond him now. But it was New Year’s Day and after all that effort, we couldn’t just throw the mess away. Stan and I agreed to bake it anyway, promising each other that our creation, if not quite the famed dish of memory, would no doubt taste good. And indeed, the lush, creamy pudding that came out of the oven at the end was quite delicious. But we knew, Stan and I, that we were eating salvage. It was not what we meant, at all. The failure lay heavy on us both.

Soufflés, except of the occasional dessert variety, are rare on modern menus in the United States, done in by the same cultural shift that killed the once ubiquitous quiche: an obsession with fat and cholesterol. (“What lovely little luncheons and suppers we used to have in the ‘60s,” Julia Child once lamented, “when real people ate quiche.”) All those eggs! All that cheese! Don’t even mention the butter! And even as an appetite for eggs and fat has stealthily returned, butter and bacon and butterscotch pudding made safe again by statins, controversial new research about the benefits of “natural” fats, and something of a devil-may-care attitude by foodies toward heart disease, the soufflé has yet to make a comeback. I am now forty-five and despite the hundreds of restaurant meals I’ve eaten in the last two decades, I have never had one. Nor have I ever known anyone, besides Stan, to make them at home.

A glance at Stan’s old copy of the recipe is enough to know that it dates from a different era: it was obviously printed in the mid-twentieth century, around the same time as Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which uses a similar typography. The font alone evokes a vanished world of formal meals served in sumptuous salons, glittering with crystal and candlelight; of a time when a fancy dinner was an occasion, to dress, to indulge, before anyone would have dreamed of wearing jeans to dine; of Paris when the very notion of the city, especially for Americans of a certain age (my Jewish grandmother, even post-Vichy, post-Drancy, was one of these), was the ne plus ultra of sophistication and romance. Today’s zeitgeist equates formality with pretension, white tablecloths with stuffiness and elitism, but I miss the dress-up occasions with my grandparents that I remember from my childhood and young adulthood, the sense of specialness, the sense of theater.

A quick online search confirms my guess about the period. When I type some of the recipe writer’s purple introductory prose—“Have you ever been in Paris when the horse-chestnut trees are in their final, vulnerable bloom….”—into Google, the source, or so it seems, pops up immediately: “Classes in Classic Cuisine: Entrée Soufflés,” by Louis Diat, Gourmet, October 1956. There it is in its glorious entirety, including not only the lobster recipe but eight other soufflés; a tiny black and white photograph of the distinguished-looking Louis Diat; and the first page of his introduction, which is missing from Stan’s copy. (“It is unfortunate,” Diat writes soothingly, “that Soufflés have been associated so closely with the intricate mysteries of haute cuisine that many people hesitate to attempt them. Soufflés have been labeled ‘overly rich,’ ‘very expensive,’ and ‘difficult to make,’ but none of these accusations is true.” To which I can only say, thinking of my experience with Stan, Uh huh.)

Of course, the text I find on the web isn’t quite the same as Stan’s lovingly preserved artifact. The Internet has transmuted the elegant Granjon typeface of the original into a crowded Times Roman and eliminated the lovely little line drawing of the grand Plaza-Athenée dining room, stripping the article, both conceptually and as a physical object, of the sense of time and place so palpable in the original. And that purple prose seems forgivable in the stylish old font, a relic of its time, but excruciating in modern format. Then there are the de’s of the French dishes: they have been transformed by a scanning error into grating do’s, combining with other mistakes to create such follies as “soufflé do volatile a la feme” (soufflé de volaille à la Reine,” perhaps?). The h of homard has likewise been misread as a b, producing the monstrous soufflé do bomard. “‘Soufflé do bomard,’” Diat writes in this butchered version, referring to a menu he proposes for a luncheon in Paris. “‘Soufflé do bomard,’ I thought to myself with a smile. ‘Certainly no New York chef would be likely to make that suggestion!’”

A little more online digging reveals that Louis Diat was a famous French chef and cookbook author of the first half of the twentieth century. He worked as chef de cuisine at the Ritz in both Paris and London and then was made head chef at the Ritz-Carlton in New York when it opened in 1910. Many credit him with the invention of vichyssoise and some with disseminating a love for French cuisine among American restaurant-goers, thanks to the many chefs he trained in his kitchen and the reputation of his food at the Ritz, long before Julia Child did the same for the home cook. But it was his much younger brother, Lucien, the then renowned chef de cuisine of Le Plaza Athenée (and the man in whose kitchen Jacques Pépin trained), who invented the recipe for the lobster soufflé.

Only after discovering Diat’s long history as a cookbook author do I realize that Stan’s two sheets of paper can’t come from a magazine: I’d failed to notice before that they are numbered 421 and 422. And the recipe that follows the lobster in the magazine pages is wrong, too—it’s for Soufflé aux Champignons, not Oyster Soufflé, as in Stan’s version. A cookbook then. But which one? There are several out-of-print Diat cookbooks featured on bookstore websites, many of them published under the imprint of Gourmet magazine, for whom he worked as in-house chef and wrote regularly from the mid-forties until his death in 1957. I choose Gourmet’s Basic French Cookbook: Techniques in French Cuisine, written by Diat and posthumously published in 1961 (the same year, coincidentally, as Mastering the Art) because it was reissued in 1968, close enough, I figure, to Stan’s 1969 lunch to be my source. When the book arrives a few days later, its pages releasing a smell like the inside of certain cupboards in my grandparents’ Queens attic, I know I’ve guessed right. There it is, the real thing, on pages 421 and 422, with the little drawing intact and followed as it should be by Oyster Soufflé, Soufflé de Homard Plaza-Athéneé.

A few days after receiving the Diat, I run into Jacques Pépin at my local fish market. This is not as improbable as it might at first sound. Pépin lives in the next town east of me in Connecticut. I’ve seen him once before, dining with friends at a local Chinese restaurant, and heard that he shops at my fish market, but this is the first time I’ve encountered him there. What luck! Never in my life have I bothered a celebrity, but this is too good an opportunity to pass up.

Another customer comes in behind me with a small mop of a dog on a leash, and Pépin immediately bends down to scrub its neck. When he straightens up, still clucking his tongue at the little animal, I move toward him, saying in a breathless rush, “Mr. Pépin? I’m so sorry to bother you, but I wonder if I might ask you a question.”

He looks skeptical, but not annoyed. He must get this all the time. “Yes,” he says, neutrally, “of course.”

“A friend and I recently made Plaza-Athéneé Lobster Soufflé….”

Pépin’s face brightens. Ah, he seems to be thinking, maybe this will be interesting. “Yes?”

“And my friend remembered that the hotel used to serve it with the lobster sauce at the bottom of the soufflé, but in your most recent cookbook….” I flail about, trying desperately to think of the title, but my mind has gone blank.

“The Essential Pépin?” Jacques Pépin supplies.

I feel myself color, but plunge on. “Yes, in The Essential Pépin, you say to put the lobster sauce on the side. I know you worked there and I wondered…?”

“Oh, yes,” Pépin says, smiling warmly now. “They used to do it that way. But I thought it made the lobster too dry. You know, you cook it once in the sauce, and then you cook it again in the soufflé. It’s too much. So I thought it was a little better my way.”

“So that’s it!” I say. “Thank you. You’ve solved a mystery for me. Thank you very much.” I give him an appreciative nod, then turn slightly to allow him to go back to his business, but he leans toward me.

“My wife and I,” he says confidentially, “sometimes when we have a lobster, I still make that sauce, to put on pasta. I take the lobster shells, sauté them in a little oil, and then add the mixture of carrots and onions—”

“The mirepoix,” I say helpfully. He looks surprised, either by my interruption or because I know the term. I feel, foolishly, a little puff of vanity, to be able to talk, in the middle of a small fish store in Connecticut, to a great chef in this shorthand cooking code. Never mind that I know the word only from a close study of Diat’s recipe.

“The mirepoix, yes,” Pépin says. “And then maybe add a little cream, some white wine, whatever I have, some paprika, of course. It makes a very nice sauce.”

“Thank you,” I say again, delighted by his generosity, the honor of being offered this private recipe by one of the world’s best-known and well-loved chefs. “I’ll have to try that.”

And I mean to, sometime, but first, there is still a soufflé recipe to master.

When Stan and I didn’t succeed, I could have just made the soufflé again, at any time, on my own. But it isn’t that kind of dish. It’s expensive, for one thing, and takes hours to make, for another, but most of all, it’s meant for an occasion, for the appreciative oohs and ahs and ooh la las of guests. I would have happily made it for my husband on a birthday or anniversary, but the right moment hadn’t arisen. It seemed to me a lot of trouble for an ordinary supper.

The perfect opportunity to try again finally came when we invited our friends Evan and Günther to spend the weekend at our house. We’d had many lively dinner dates with the two men, and one pleasant enough weekend with another couple, but had never before spent two full days alone together. We weren’t sure how it would go. Evan loved to cook: he and Günther gave exquisite dinner parties at which Evan served things like Crab Imperial and tiny, perfectly prepared baby lamb chops with a cumin sauce. Making the soufflé together would give a focus to the weekend.

On the day of the big event, I started to worry that it wouldn’t go well, that Evan and I would produce another failure. Somehow, I fell back into the role of sous chef, though it was my kitchen and, unlike last time, my show. I didn’t mind that, but Evan wasn’t one to measure, brushing aside the calibrated cup I offered to pour the oil freely into the pan. He projected the confidence of an experienced cook, but still, it made me anxious. Freewheeling was fine in its place, but I meant to execute this dish as if Lucien Diat himself were looking over our shoulders. I meant to get this one exactly right. Fortunately, mindful of my experience with Stan, I had prepped every item before we started, lining each ingredient up on the counter in order of use, ready to hand to Evan before he asked for it. His insouciance made me doubly glad that the remaining ingredients were already resting in their small glass bowls, each according to specs.

Before long, I began to relax. We found a good rhythm, working easily around one another. Everything looked right, smelled right, we were having a good time.

While the sauce simmered we took a break on the porch with a glass of wine, and then we returned to the kitchen to extract the lobster from the shells and to whip up the soufflé itself. Only then did I realize that I’d forgotten to suggest that we cook the lobster less than the recipe said. This was to be my only serious deviation from Diat. The sauce would go in the bottom, à la Stan, not on the side, but it made sense to me to apply Pépin’s insight by taking the shellfish off the heat sooner. I’d lost track and Evan hadn’t set a timer, but it seemed as if it had been in the pan a long time already, more, surely, than even the recipe’s twenty minutes.

My heart sank. “It’s going to be overcooked,” I muttered to Stephan when Evan stepped outside to retrieve his wine glass. “The lobster is going to be rubber.”

“Looks like you’ll be making it again before long,” Stephan whispered back.

We ate on the porch by candlelight.

Louis Diat’s 1950s luncheon included Germiny en Tasse (beef or chicken bouillon soup), Paillettes Diable (an Alsatian pork dish), the lobster soufflé, Baron de Pauillac Princesse (possibly trout in white wine sauce, but I’m not sure), Salade de Chicorée aux Fines Herbes (chicory salad with herbs), Coeur de Jeannette (a dessert mousse), and Mignardises (assorted pastries, akin to petit fours); true to our age, we completed our menu with a simple salad and a good Chablis, followed by a raspberry tart from a local bakery.

The soufflé at least, which Evan had graciously suggested I take charge of making, had emerged from the oven perfectly puffed and golden. We admired it a moment longer before I cut through the crown, releasing a heavenly fragrance of butter and Cognac and the sea. Each plate received a custardy wedge of egg, followed by pieces of white flesh swimming in a delicate orange sauce.

Stephan and Günther raised their glasses to the cooks. I took a bite. The flavor that burst on my tongue was astounding, so luscious and complex that I stopped chewing a moment to savor it: sweet lobster and the black cherry taste of sherry, salty roe, musky parmesan, all balanced by cream and egg. The lobster was not overcooked. It was tender and moist and delicious. There were groans of pleasure around the table.

“My God!” Günther said in his cultivated German accent. “This is fabulous!”

“I feel like we should be wearing tuxedos,” Stephan said.

Evan raised his glass again, this time to me. “I’ll always remember this,” he said, “as the weekend of the lobster soufflé.”

I didn’t tell Stan that I had made the soufflé with someone else. The urge to try again grew stronger with each new discovery of its history, but when I thought about sharing my finds with Stan—the glee of holding the real cookbook in my hand, the serendipitous encounter with Pépin—I saw his mortified expression as we scooped lobster pudding onto our plates. Any mention of the failed soufflé caused him to cover his face with his hands in only half-mock humiliation.

There’s only way to satisfy one’s curiosity as a cook: master the recipe. How else to explore the alchemy of its parts? How else to taste it? And yet, after the fact, my success with Evan seemed like a betrayal. It was Stan’s memory after all, his madeleine. But it was mine, too, now, a link, as food so often is, from past to present to future, Le Plaza Athéneé to Stan to me, Lucien Diat to Jacques Pépin, transformed on the way but still recognizable as a dish that emerged—in all its celebratory decadence—from a kitchen in Paris sometime in the first dreary decade after the Second World War.

All else aside, Stan was right and I was hooked: Soufflé de Homard Plaza-Athéneé was one of the best things I had ever eaten.

Lucien Diat’s Soufflé de Homard Plaza-Athéneé, as written by Louis Diat:

Remove the claws and tails from 3 lobsters ⁱ, each weighing 1 ¾ to 2 pounds, and with a large heavy knife divide each of the body sections into three or four pieces. In a large saucepan make the following vegetable mirepoix: Melt 2 tablespoons butter, add 1 medium carrot cut in fine dice, 2 tablespoons finely chopped onion, and 1 tablespoon chopped chives. Cook the mirepoix over very low heat until the vegetables are soft but not brown.

Sprinkle the cut up lobsters with salt and pepper. In a large shallow pan, cook them in ½ cup very hot salad oil, turning them to cook all sides evenly. Put the lobster pieces—they will be red—on top of the mirepoix and sprinkle them with 1 teaspoon paprika. Mix all together and add 2 tablespoons Cognac, ½ cup dry white wine, and 1 cup heavy cream. Bring the sauce to a boil and cook the lobsters for 18 to 20 minutes. Remove the lobsters from the pan, carefully separate the meat from the shells, and cut the meat into slices ¼ inch thick. Over high heat reduce the liquid remaining in the pan to about ½ the original quantity. Add 1 cup cream sauce and 3 tablespoons each of heavy cream and dry Sherry. ⁱⁱ Strain the sauce, making sure that no fine bits of shell get through the sieve, and combine half of it with the lobster meat. Butter a pair of 1-quart soufflé dishes and divide the lobster mixture between them. ⁱⁱⁱ Keep the rest of the sauce warm.

Prepare a cheese soufflé mixture as follows: Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a saucepan, add ¼ cup flour, and cook the roux until it starts to turn golden. Stir in ¾ cup hot milk and cook for about 5 minutes, or until the sauce is very thick, stirring constantly. Add ½ teaspoon salt and a little cayenne pepper. Beat 5 egg yolks, combine them with the first mixture, and heat all together just to the boiling point, stirring briskly. Do not allow the sauce to boil. Add ¾ cup grated Parmesan or dry Swiss cheese. Fold in 5 egg whites beaten stiff but not dry.

Spoon the cheese soufflé mixture over the lobster-and-sauce mixture in the molds. Bake the soufflés in a moderate oven (350 degrees F.) for 18 to 20 minutes, or until they are well puffed and delicately browned. ^iv To serve, put some of the top of the soufflé on one side of each plate and some of the lobster mixture from the bottom on the other side. Pass the reserved lobster sauce separately.

ⁱWe used only two lobsters for four people.

ⁱⁱ This is the confusing bit in the recipe. Presumably Diat means that all the sauce should be strained, heavy cream and sherry added, and half the mixture poured over the lobster, half reserved for later.

ⁱⁱⁱWe used one 2-quart pan.

^ivIt took about thirty minutes in my oven, using the larger pan. Plan on thirty-forty minutes. The soufflé will not fall if you open the oven door to check on it.

Anna Cypra Oliver is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Assembling My Father (Houghton Mifflin, 2004; Mariner Books, 2006). Her essays have appeared in Fourth Genre, dislocate and Chokecherries. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota, and lives with her husband in New York City and Connecticut. This is the first time any of her oil paintings have been shared with the public.

Non-Fiction February 4, 2013

A Missing Ingredient

by Eve Turow

“What’s for dinner tonight?” he wrote me.

It was the first question he asked. We’d met online and within two days had discussed our favorite restaurants in New York and engaged in a flirtatious exchange on the delicious versatility of cauliflower. Our romance blossomed over words like “lily root,” “pork belly,” and “fried oysters.”

I had arrived in New York City just six months earlier. After making my way through the dregs of post-college confusion, I was finally set on a new career path in a new city. But tethered to my evolving self-definition came my utter bewilderment in not only how to find, but also how to define, the right partner for me. As my friends paired off, I sat before a list of profiles, unsure who to click and who to pass on.

A newbie to the online dating world, I decided to play the field: an amuse-bouche tasting of New York singles. There was the investment banker– charming, witty, but ultimately too focused on the bottom line, the doctor with an intriguing past but persist awkward stare, and the ad guy, who, while attentive, was too saccharine to take seriously. I was growing pessimistic and tired of the nerve rattling anticipation of each date and the depleting disappointment thereafter.

Then, after months of scanning profiles and exchanging disheartening messages with men I never hoped to meet, I had quickly developed a charming gourmand banter with a guy who appeared, at least in his carefully selected profile photo, quite handsome. For our proposed first date, he promised to take me to a hidden restaurant on a small street, the most romantic suggestion I could think of.

Repeatedly clicking on his photos, I could see he was of medium build with a wide smile that made his eyes squint slightly on his round face. I could imagine myself with him.

Still, I decided to test this man before agreeing to meet in person. I picked one of his favorite restaurants, copied down the address and dined to discern what I could about him. The food was good. No, better than good, it was great. A piping bowl of Thai noodle soup seeped in palm sugar, soy sauce and coriander propelled me to the stalls lining the streets of Bangkok. I groaned in satisfaction as I placed my face deep in the bowl, steaming myself in the aromas of fish sauce and simmered chicken broth. I hoped no one was looking. How could they know that I was not just celebrating a find of authentic Thai cuisine in Manhattan, but a man with sagacious taste?

“This is something,” I told a friend.

“Have you met?” he questioned.

“Well, no, but it’s something,” I reassured him. In my persistent quest to define what kind of man I wanted to be with, I had uncovered a key connection: food.

He worked in the food industry and had left his finance job to complete a year in culinary school and join the gastronome world. I had learned the basics of home cooking not from a professor but Ina Garten’s perfectly manicured hands on Barefoot Contessa and Mark Bittman’s quirky Minimalist videos: how to chiffonade my herbs, roast a chicken, steam fish. I enjoy having friends over for dinner, feel no guilt spending an extra few dollars on truffle cheese, and often find myself marveling at the television as Anthony Bourdain splits open a steaming crab in Cambodia or the creative minds of Iron Chef America magically transform a fish into slippery noodles.

As it seems to be for most 25 year olds, food is only growing in importance. I have heard theories that food is my generation’s indie rock; while it was once cool to follow the Pixies or Nirvana, it’s now hip to eat Korean tacos out of a curbside truck and pickle your own (organic) veggies (such as beets, ramps and carrots, which, tip: can double as home decor). But, to me, food is more than a fad; perhaps I will stop Instagramming photos of my lunch as time progresses but I can’t help feeling food itself will maintain its position on the high-standing podium. As I spend my days typing in front of a computer from the moment I rise to when the sun tucks itself beneath the horizon, food has become a distinct means to connect and to integrate new sensations into a life that is otherwise occupied with clicks, tags and pokes. There’s nothing I look forward to more than sitting at dinner with friends, the smell of burgers filling the air and juice running down my chin as I bite into a perfectly medium-rare patty.

With all this in mind, I decided to give Mr. Culinary a shot. On a cool winter evening, I met him at a bar on the Lower East Side. Before I left my apartment I downed a glass of wine to still my nerves, and as the moment to meet grew closer, I convinced myself I had over-rated this yet mysterious man. But he greeted me with a smile even brighter and more endearing in person. Over four glasses of Malbec, flatbread with butternut squash, and shrimp and grits, I got to know Mr. Culinary. He ordered my wine and watched for when my glass neared empty, asked if I wanted the last bite on the plate and later, how soon he could see me again.

For our second date he sent me five options for brunch, listing each restaurant’s specialty dish. We wandered his neighborhood and he pointed out his favorite cheese shop and another restaurant we surely had to try for brunch another time. In the days that followed, we texted one another photos of our meals apart: half-conquered pastrami sandwiches at Katz’s deli, a tower of seafood at Balthazar, the various stages of a Christmas seafood pasta he was preparing for his family, my depressing bowl of stir-fry eaten on my lonely Jewish singleton couch. He gave me a liter of extra virgin olive oil for Christmas that he assured me was pressed in the hillsides of Italy just that week. He understands me, I thought.

And three weeks in, I felt the stirring sultry bloom fading.

“I don’t know if he can talk about anything other than food,” I confessed to my older brother.

“Have you asked him non-food-related questions?” he inquired with a sibling’s all-knowing tone.

The next day, sitting across from my dark haired, hazel-eyed date in the Meatball Shop in Williamsburg, I tested out my brother’s advice. As the conversation paused and puttered between our bites of meatballs atop salad and spaghetti, I pushed the conversation beyond our usual domain. Sure enough my online epicurean was well versed in politics, books, TV. But as he talked about the health care bill and Obama, subjects I would generally gladly converse about, my shoulders remained tense, feet tucked beneath my chair. The new topics didn’t stimulate the conversation the way chicken liver terrine and burrata had in weeks past.

A few days later Mr. Culinary suggested cooking dinner at his apartment: carbonara and roasted brussels sprouts. We traded stories about our days as he blended the honeybee yellow egg yolks into the silky cream and I tossed the sprouts, oil coating my hands, smiling and laughing with eagerness for the delectable meal. At points, he would gaze over, examining me, I thought, and I would quickly look away.

After the meal, Mr. Culinary pulled me toward him, his back against the granite kitchen counter top. His hands felt misplaced on my hips. I didn’t want to lean forward for a kiss. I could feel perspiration gather on my palms and as I looked into his eyes, my stomach began to churn.

“I have to go,” I said quickly. His hands dropped as his head tilted in confusion.

“Ok.”

I picked up my things and left. Walking into the subway station, I couldn’t decide if my stomach flips were from the rich bacon and Parmesan carbonara or the remaining possibilities of the evening.

As I sat at home wondering how to explain my waning interest, an email arrived in my inbox: “I have really enjoyed getting to know you over the past few weeks,” he wrote. “We have so many interests in common but I know that it’s more about the intangibles when it comes to chemistry in a relationship.” And with that he clarified my own discomforts: it was the food talk that turned me on, not the man saying it.

Perhaps that was why I had been content sending and receiving twenty messages a day about cheese platters or cured meat tastings. It was only natural that I found back and forth messaging about meals of “short ribs with red wine Cab Franc from North Folk” exciting; providing details of our gastronomic ventures aroused the senses even from afar. And I was thrilled to find a man who could match my interests, who had wall art listing the ingredients in a Twinkie, who could teach me about the top producers of mascarpone or provide insight on the best homemade pasta in the city. The problem was, that was where the seduction ended.

How, I wondered, had I gotten to a place where I found food sexy enough to at least temporarily substitute for, well, sex? As much as I love the sensations of food and the intimacy of sharing a meal, no amount of food-talk can replace the other ingredients to romantic success. When did my liberal arts psychology mind turn to spice blends and Chez Panisse? And after all, I should have known sooner. He would prefer Momofuku’s $140 duck dinner, me: Vanessa’s Dumplings. Perhaps the titillation and excitement of it all blinded me to the most obvious realities, or maybe, in my discouraging and frustrating search for a compatible partner, a little sizzling, sautéing and simmering was just what I needed for a few weeks time.

Eve Turow is Deputy Editor of The Inquisitive Eater. She is completing her MFA in Creative Nonfiction at The New School and currently works as Editorial & Executive Assistant to Mark Bittman. Her work has appeared in several publications including NPR’s “Kitchen Window,” The Chicago Tribune and The Atlantic. You can read more about Eve at eveturow.com.

Non-Fiction December 5, 2012

Chicken Kill

by Carmella Guiol

The first time I saw a chicken being killed, it was by my own hand. I was living on a commune in southeast Portland (they preferred the term “intentional community”) and one of the chickens of the flock turned out to be a rowdy rooster. He was harassing all of the lady chickens and being a menace to the children on the farm, so we decided (by consensus, of course) to make him dinner. But when it came time to decide who was going to do the deed, it seemed everyone was much too busy to be bothered. One of the community members, Sue – a supremely sweet and soft-spoken mother of three – volunteered to take on the task, and I followed suit, forgetting momentarily that I’m just a city girl from Miami who has never so much as cooked a chicken, let alone killed one with my bare hands. Although neither of us had done this before, we both wanted to get closer to our food, and this was the perfect opportunity to get truly up-close and personal.

One bright blue summer afternoon, Sue and I headed out into the field, she dangling the rooster at her side, grasping him firmly by his coarse feet, and me boldly clutching a sharp knife. We were told that if you held a chicken upside down by their legs, they would slip into a semi-unconscious state; it seemed to be working. Sue’s thin cheeks lost their color before we even reached the butcher’s block. She mumbled to the subdued rooster under her breath as we walked, his shiny black feathers flashing in the sunlight. “I’m so sorry about this. Really, I am. But you’ve had a good life, haven’t you?”, she tried to reason with him, pushing up her glasses nervously. He remained peacefully unresponsive. At this point, I was still feeling quite resolute about the whole affair. I had decided a while ago to face the truth about my food no matter how unpleasant that might be; this experience would put that decision to the test.

We got to a spot in the field that was partially hidden by some trees. As instructed by our fellow community members better versed in the art of chicken sacrifice, we hung an empty bottomless water jug from a sturdy branch; this was where we would stick the chicken upside down after the deed was done to let his arteries bleed out. Sue shook her head miserably, clearly disturbed by what we were about to do, and handed me the knife.

My determination seemed to evaporate as I took the blade in hand. There were several ways we could do this, but I had eschewed the method of breaking the chicken’s neck with my bare hands. “You could always put its neck under your foot and jerk it really hard,” Sue offered, trying to be helpful. I shook my head softly; the knife seemed quicker, cleaner.

We knelt down in the grass. I grasped the handle of the knife while Sue held down our victim. It wasn’t a particularly big knife, so I wasn’t going to chop its head clean off, but I hoped it was sharp enough to make the necessary incision as quickly and painlessly as possible. I wanted this whole ordeal to be over, and as I stood over our rooster friend, Sue cooing her final words of remorse, I seriously regretted having volunteered for the job. We both took a deep, calming breath. She stretched out his long, black neck and I took aim.

In one quick motion, I jabbed at his rubbery neck with my blade. Unfortunately, the cut wasn’t as fast or easy as I had hoped, much to my and Sue’s horror. I stabbed again, hoping for better results, but the knife bounced back at me. At this point, the chicken was squawking like crazy, having woken up with a start from his swinging slumber. He started batting his wings vehemently and trying with all his might to make a quick getaway. Sue was having trouble keeping him down and I was pretty sure that she was going to run for the hills at any moment. Hastily, I tried a new approach and began to saw at the leathery skin. This worked almost immediately and, much to my relief, a stream of hot blood leaked out of the wound and onto his dark plumage, still glittering regally in the sun.

Glad that the killing part was over, we smiled weakly at each other over the body and worked to wrestle the chicken into the makeshift kill cone, his body convulsing with uncontrollable spasms. Thankfully, we had been warned of this frightening side effect by our seasoned chicken killer friends. “Maybe that knife wasn’t sharp enough,” Sue mused, as we watched his body jerk unconsciously. “We really should have had a bigger knife,” I agreed regrettably.

Once the blood had stopped dripping and the body had gone limp, we took the chicken up to the house to be “processed”. On the back porch, Hans, the burly German nurse who lived in a teepee on the land, showed us how to properly skin and eviscerate the chicken. Sue and I watched intently but didn’t offer our help; we were still shaken from our experience in the field. I, for one, was extremely grossed out by the mere idea of sticking my hands inside the chicken’s body, so touching the slippery and slimy internal organs was out of the question. I had already summoned the courage to take this chicken’s life, and that was enough emotional stress for one day.

Once the bird had been stripped down to something that you might find at the grocery store, it was taken into the kitchen to become dinner. A few hours later, we all sat around the big, round table, enjoying our extremely local chicken meal. As I chewed thoughtfully on my rooster friend’s flesh, I thought about the scrappy life he led here on the farm. He wasn’t as fatty and full-bodied as a supermarket chicken would be; in fact, his meat was a bit tough and stringy. But I felt good knowing where he had spent his days, scratching around in the yard, pestering his flock mates and putting on a dramatic display of machismo to anyone who crossed his path.

Taking his life hadn’t been easy, certainly not as easy as picking up a frozen bird from the local grocery store, or better yet – an expertly seasoned, crisped to perfection, golden brown rotisserie chicken ready for immediate consumption. But this way felt uncomplicated, somehow, true and real. Biting my lip as I readied myself to go for the jugular, dull blade in hand, I had to dig deep within to find the strength to go through with the motion. Unlike so many things today that come far too easily and with casual convenience, I had to give a bit of myself to get something in return, and I’m thankful that I did.

Carmella Guiol is a community food activist and writer from Miami, Florida. Read her blog: renouncerejoice.blogspot.com.

Non-Fiction April 26, 2012

¡Buenos Días Berlin!

by Danielle Bonnici

My Denver-bred husband was craving Mexican food. Not authentic, arroz con frijoles or tamales, but the Tex-Mex style of his hometown. Back in New York, we made quesadillas, nachos, Mission-style burritos, all topped with chunky salsa fresca and homemade guacamole. But here in the heart of Berlin, this was a bit of a challenge. We lived in the more genteel area of Schoneberg, where gourmet shops and natural food stores were well stocked with local, organic apples, kales and roots, fresh cheeses, chocolates, artisan breads, and olive oil rich sauces imported from Italy and Greece. Avocados? Sometimes. In BioCompany on Haupstraße, they were small, hard, ovals. In the Riechelt down the block, they were large, genetically modified monstrosities, with unnatural smooth skin. Both varieties lacked the creaminess of the Hass avocados we used to buy in Queens. The alternative was pre-made guacamole spread, a nasty concoction that looked like greenish cream sauce rather than the chunky guacamole of Tex-Mex cuisine. There was also the problem of tortillas. Germans are known for their bread, but their tortillas were rubbery, sweet cardboards. And the salsa. Our friend Riechelt sold Del Fuego brand. Not bad, but lacking in kick and too sugary for the real deal. Zucker seemed to be a required ingredient in all packaged German foods, including beans, vegetables, and even hummus. Despite these obstacles, I was determined to figure out a way to make the food Dennis craved.

We had come to Berlin because I was offered a job at a German-American high school. We knew we were taking a huge risk–I’d left a job with the Department of Education, and he’d left a budding career as a coffee roaster in an up and coming roastery in Brooklyn. But what did any of that matter given the opportunity to live and work abroad? A lot it seems. While things only went well for me, Dennis had struggled. After a month of working at a café, the management refused to pay him. Apparently this is a trick played a lot on newcomers, and without a visa my husband had no recourse. He was unemployed, far from home, and the only person he knew was me. Always an avid runner, and without anything else to do, he ran for kilometers along the Spree, burning up energy and calories at an alarming rate. I didn’t want him to waste away, so Tex-Mex had to happen.

With some exploring, I managed to find beans nicht zucker in Oz-Gida, the delightful Turkish supermarket a little bit further down on Haupstraße. A friend from work said there was nothing we could do about the avocados, but recommended Aqui España in Charlottenberg for our other quandaries. My husband and I were feeling intrepid, so one day after work, we embarked on the journey to the mini-Spain of Berlin. An S-bahn, U-bahn, bus, and 25 minute walk brought us to the tiny market. As soon as we walked in, I smelled the familiar gamey scent of jamón. I raised my eyes to the ceiling to see rows of the stuff hanging. The cramped aisles were crammed with olives, oils, pimentón, saffron. An entire wall was dedicated to the wines of Spain and Portugal, and one diminutive section was devoted to the salsas and sauces of Mexico and South America. Finally! Three mini-shelves of salsa! We grabbed at the jars with greed, drinking in the ingredients, desperate to find edible, sugar-free salsa. We found a bottle, not unlike a bottle of beer, made in Mexico. It looked chunky and delicious. There was also tomatillo salsa, refried beans, masa harina, and a beautiful tortilla press. We loaded our arms and with all haste made our way to our apartment in Shoneberg to make burritos.

The tortilla press worked perfectly. The tomato salsa was spicy-rich with garlic and cumin and chili, but was as salty as the German brand was sugary. After every bite we needed to drink so much water that our stomachs filled with liquid rather than Tex-Mex goodness. So we were back at the beginning.

Some weeks later, a mission unrelated to our desire for Mexican food brought us to KaDeWe, a massive, seven-floor department store, the sixth floor of which was a gourmet shop to put all others to shame. There were little restaurants representing every country, rows of chocolate, a champagne bar, wine bars, cheese bars, olive bars, tea bars, an exotic fruit and vegetable stand, and finally, a tiny aisle devoted to American food. This aisle contained: Hershey Bars, Swiss Miss, Pancake Mix, Jack Daniel’s barbeque sauce, Reese’s peanut butter cups, Chips Ahoy, and finally, a whole variety of Old El Paso Mexican products, that reminded me of my childhood taco night. That night, we made a Tex-Mex feast with homemade tortillas and guacamole, delicious homemade beans, and topped it all with good old American salsa. It almost seemed like we were back in our tiny Astoria apartment, like we were back home.

Danielle Bonnici is an English teacher, traveler, and yogi who lives in the woodlands of Queens, NY.

personal essay

The Next Course

On Hunger

By TJ Jarrett

Stan’s Madeleine

By Anna Cypra Oliver

Lucien Diat’s Soufflé de Homard Plaza-Athéneé, as written by Louis Diat:

By
Anna Cypra Oliver