Expect the unexpected, possibly three-square meals a day of it

Eight or nine years ago, I began hybridizing some of my houseplants. The hobby has increased my patience (in addition to branding me, unmistakably, as a botany nerd). I chose to work with Hippeastrum, a genus of tropical bulbs grown for their showy flowers. They're easy to hybridize, but they take a while to grow up. On average, they need three or four years from seed to bloom.

"Store-bought" (commercially available) Hippeastrum hybrids blooming for me in the fall of 2011

"Average" is one of those slippery concepts that's not always helpful. My first hybridizing attempts went well. I put the seedlings outside for the summer, where they and the parent plants were decimated by Narcissus Bulb Fly, a truly disgusting and destructive pest. Disheartened, I stopped growing these plants for several years. I've grown them for more years of my life than not, though, and missed them enough to acquire a few more, a few years later. I hybridized the new plants, but lost those seedlings, too, because I couldn't care for them during a series of big life changes. Three years ago, I tried my hand at hybridizing again, using those Hippeastrum still with me after several years of neglect. I got a huge crop of seedlings, and pampered them until last fall, when an injury required me to give up most gardening activities. I've had to reduce my houseplant collection drastically, and I have no place for the Hippeastrum. I dragged all the pots of seedlings--too many for me to care for--and all the pots of parent plants--also way too many--outside onto my rooftop this spring and left them alone all summer. When Hurricane Sandy threatened, I dragged all the pots back in, but only so that they wouldn't be blown off the roof and onto the heads of passersby. I left the Hippeastrum in the back hallway to dwindle into husks.

I've been feeling bad about about littering the back hallway of my building with dying Hippeastrum. Last weekend, I decided I'd make things better for my neighbors by cleaning up that mess. Sifting through dead leaves, I found bulb after bulb not just not dying, but actually sending up buds. Mostly, the parent plants are budding, but one of the seedlings is, too--the first of my own hybrids to bloom for me in all these years.

I was already on a high from unexpected events, having just stumbled across something else I'd given up on: a vegetarian recipe for Vietnamese pho. The non-vegetarian version of this soup has what might be the best broth in the world, made with, among other things, a whole chicken and an awe-inspiring number of spareribs. After extended experimenting, a few years ago, I gave up on making the dish because I didn't think it was possible to get that flavor without the meat. I was looking for a recipe for something else, but there this one was. Reading the recipe, I realized I'd never tried to flavor broth with star anise.  I will be using it frequently now. That was unexpected, too: the flavor it adds to broth is almost magical.

I really didn't follow the pho recipe. I can't find fresh Thai basil or Vietnamese cilantro around here at this time of year, and I had other vegetables that I needed to use up. What I made is certainly not pho. (It doesn't have any noodles, to start with.) It does highlight the abilities of star anise.

Not Pho with Star Anise

peanut oil

1 small-medium onion

2 scallions (you can skip these and use a lightly larger onion)

1 clove garlic 

1 pod star anise

1 small-medium sweet potato

1 medium Korean radish (or use daikon, or turnip, or rutabaga)

salt

freshly ground black or white pepper

pinch sugar

1 egg per person eating

handful mint leaves

3-4 large, outer lettuce leaves

Slice the onions thinly. Chop the scallions and garlic. Saute onion, garlic and scallions in a little peanut oil until softened, but not browned. Add about 6 cups of water and the star anise. Bring to a boil over medium heat while you dice the potato and radish. Add diced vegetables, bring to a gentle boil again and cook over medium-low heat for about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, chop the mint. Slice the lettuce leaves crosswise into 1/8"-wide ribbons. Fry the eggs in a little more peanut oil. When they've cooled slightly, cut them into bite-sized pieces.

Season the soup with salt, pepper and sugar. Add the lettuce and cook another 2 minutes. Put the soup into bowls and top with mint and egg.

Serves 2-3 hungry people who like to eat a lot of soup, or 4 people who are eating this soup as part of a meal.

Let me know if you try this recipe, and if it surprises you or is unexpected in any way.

My seedling 

Unexpected things are a bit like meteorological events.  They drop out of the sky, sometimes evenly paced, like steady rain, and sometimes clumped irregularly, like the fused snowflakes that drift around during warmer-weather  snowstorms. We could say 'expect the unexpected,' but what is the point of making the unexpected into something predictable that occurs, say, once per week, or by 10:00pm on the first Saturday of the month? Lack of temporal regularity sharpens the joy of the unexpected. Still, I know the allure of predictability; I like being able to count on things. I want to be able to count on surprise and novelty. What to do?

Follow recipes. Listen to music.

A recipe regularizes the unexpected. The meal you made turned out so well, I need you to record what you did so I can have those unexpectedly delightful results whenever I want them. In fact, I have trouble following recipes. (And every time I write one out, I have to include notes on how others can vary the procedure or the ingredients.) In my own balance of expected and unexpected, I like a little more unexpected, at least with food. What works best for you?

I do better with listening to music, where composers and performers manipulate regularities (like rhythm) in unexpected ways. Ravel's Bolero came to mind when I was thinking about my Hippeastrum, at first because the drama in that piece takes a long time to build. But more interesting is how the drama builds.

The web site maurice-ravel.net explains:

Ravel was insistent that the work should be played at a steady and unvarying tempo (as his own recording demonstrates). "C'est une danse d'un mouvement très modéré et constamment uniforme, tant par la mélodie que par l'harmonie et le rythme, ce dernier marqué sans cesse par le tambour. Le seul élément de diversité y est apporté par le crescendo orchestral." (Ravel, [1938]). After a performance in 1930, he reprimanded Toscanini for taking the work too fast and for speeding up at the climax. (Coppola, [1944], p.105)

Rhythmically, Ravel uses the expected in an unexpected way. Or we could say that the unexpected, in this piece, is the regularity.

Bolero is inseparable, in my mind, from the movie 10, which I saw, on tv, I think, when I was too young to understand it. All I remember of it is a scene with Bo Derek and Dudley Moore. One of them asks the other,"Have you ever done it to Ravel's Bolero?" Supposedly, this results in off-the-charts sex, and they proceed to try it, but decide they've messed up part-way through, somehow, and restart the music in order to get it right. Talk about trying to regularize something so you can expect unexpectedly great results.