The real deal

Last week my friend Mr. Potter commented: 

[A] Scottish Gaelic instructor introduced me to a CD of "The North Shore Gaelic Singers", elderly Canadians of Scottish ancestry who were native speakers of Gaelic, singing Waulking Songs. He said that there's a general feeling among Gaelic Waulking song enthusiasts that they must be sung by old people to sound authentic, which he said is absurd: these songs were formerly sung by people of all ages; it just happens that now Scottish Gaelic has almost died out in maritime Canada.

So I guess if you only ever had experience with behemoth kohlrabis and then you tasted a young one, you might think it wasn't the real deal.

To waulk is to full tweed by hand, bunching and beating it to a rhythm set by a waulking song. When I learned about waulking, in the rather unreal setting of a graduate-school Scottish Gaelic class, I learned a particular pattern of thumping tweed against a table twice, then passing the section I'd worked on to the right, to the student seated next to me. We sang while doing the emperor's-new-clothes version of waulking; we didn't have any tweed to full, but we banged out the rhythm with imaginary cloth in our fists.

Was that an authentic waulking experience? Depends on what counts as real, I'd say, but, based on it, I didn't recognize this song as a waulking song. It has a contemporary base line instead of the sounds of tweed being waulked. After reading the liner notes, though, I could hear how the thump-thump-pass rhythm I learned fits into the song, even into this version. And when I described this version of the song to Mr. Potter a few days ago--I hadn't listened to it in a while and was trying to remember its name--he identified it by the base line. Whether any of that makes it "real," or not, I don't know.*

It's possible--really possible--to back oneself into an intellectual corner over questions of authenticity. In America, "real" brie cheese is imported from France. It's mild, rich, creamy, buttery, and not at all like the brie cheese eaten in France. French brie--I mean brie found in France, not brie found in America that's been imported from France--is medium-brown colored and decidedly stinky. As this slate.com article explains, the difference comes from US government regulations that curtail imported brie's ripening process. You just can't get the real real brie in America. But not to worry: you can get some other kinds of real brie in this country, cheeses with a more authentic (but not really authentic) flavor. Okay, so, if you've only eaten brie in America, which is the real version, the one you experience in real life, or the "real" French one, or the in-between ones?

Sometimes the real thing is the one we knew first. Sometimes, something changes our mind about what's really real, as eating brie in France changed mine. And then, sometimes, something else changes our mind all over again, as reading more about brie in America did mine (again). Sometimes, it's probably a good idea to just enjoy different versions of things as they come along, although I can't help thinking that I enjoy each version more if I understand the history behind--and relationships between--all the versions. What do you think?

Real American Brie

Image: http://blogs.etruth.com/takefivewithhaley/2013/04/12/v-top-five-favorite-cheeses/

*The Scottish Gaelic lyrics are in the comments to this video. (Scroll down.)

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose?

"Old age is not for sissies," said Bette Davis. It certainly isn't. The knees fail, the memory fails. We're not what we used to be. But what was that, exactly? What were we, in the first place, that we've changed from--grown out of or into? It's an endless quest, this trying to find the essence of ourselves. Or of anything, really.

In high school, I liked a band called the Cowboy Junkies. I especially liked a song they sang called Sweet Jane. I didn't know theirs was a cover until years later, when I heard the original Sweet Jane, by Lou Reed. I can't say I liked the original. If we think of covers as the expression of what each artist sees in a song, well, I liked what the Cowboy Junkies saw. I liked the essence they chose to draw out of Lou Reed's piece.

 

I no longer have strong opinions about this particular song and its covers, but covers, generally, fascinate me. They say so much about what we think it's okay to emphasize, to keep or to change. They tell all kinds of stories about what we think is good, what we think is real or authentic.

 

Maybe covers fascinate me because I don't tend to follow recipes too closely. I like to get ideas from other people's cooking, but I modify their recipes based on what I think is the "essence" I'd like to draw out of the recipe or its ingredients. 

 

And so, when I saw Maangchi's recipe for cold salad with spicy mustard sauce, I liked her idea of using Asian pear but decided I had something else that would do the trick: kohlrabi. The flying-saucer look-alike of the cruciferous vegetable family, kohlrabi tastes like a cross between a granny smith apple and a salad turnip. All set, I thought, I've got this recipe covered. (I should have known one cannot make bad puns like that with impunity.)

 

I'm used to buying small kohlrabi--an inch or two in diameter--at the farmers' market. Probably, this salad would work well with such very small, very fresh young things. I had something else at hand this time. Boston Organics brought a behemoth: a bigger-than-a-big-grapefruit-sized kohlrabi that had clearly been grown for winter storage, not fresh eating. This behemoth is not for sissies. Not for salads, either. At older stages in its life, I discovered, the vegetable develops an over-cooked cabbage flavor and a slightly spongy texture. 

 

At first I was disappointed. I fixated on how to bring the behemoth back to some semblance of its youth. (What could I possibly add to the salad to get that thing crispier?) Then I realized I was doing it an injustice. I have little patience with people who can't accept their own aging; why should I inflict that worldview on a kohlrabi? 

 

Here is the other way that old age is not for sissies: aging challenges us not only to accept and make the best of what we have at any given time, but also to accept that what we have--our essence, if you like--at any given time differs from what we may have had at another time. What we did to bring out our best at one point in life may not work at another, because we have a different best. Sounds so obvious, but it isn't that easy to do.

 

Musicians, especially vocalists, meet these challenges with varying degrees of grace. Here are the Cowboy Junkies performing Sweet Jane in 2011. I'd say they're not dealing well with their own aging. The arrangement of this version makes me feel the band's trying to be more like a young Lou Reed, here, than they did when they had the oomph and the edge to pull that off. *

 

Here is a no-longer-young Lou Reed performing Sweet Jane.  This has to be the most un-Lou-Reed-like performance I've ever seen from Lou Reed, possibly because he seems so true to himself. 

 

No-longer-young kohlrabi, I discovered, works well cooked lightly with fresh lotus root and a little sesame oil. Something about that combination brings out the best in each of the vegetables, just as they are.

*not to imply that aging entails loss of oomph and edge, every time

But is it really just a cigar/musician/bowl of soup?

Why is it every cookbook author is also a storyteller? Those lovely blurbs at the beginning of recipes give us something. But what?

When I worked in restaurants, we had cookbooks of a sort: lists of ingredients by proportion, with suggested oven temperatures. There wasn't any information about where the recipe-author first tasted the food, or how it played a part in the author's childhood. We didn't spend any time on telling those kinds of stories. We didn't pinpoint the recipe's cultural origin, trace its history, or suggest ways to serve it.

We did spend time on naming the recipes. I remember a protracted discussion about what to call a soup I made from leftover mushrooms and zucchini. The head chef finally decided to list it on the menu as "Amanda's Summer Vegetable Soup," not because it was inspired by summery vegetables (it was inspired by the need to use up a too-large produce order), not because any of the customers knew who I was (or cared). Rather, he felt that title evoked something--again, I'm not sure what--that would speak to the customers--pique their interest or incite their imagination--and cause them to order the soup.

He had a point. If we'd called it "Uh-oh-these-mushrooms-are-about-to-go-bad-and-crap-we-have-a-lot-of-zucchini-this-week Soup," it might have held less appeal as a menu item. Would it have tasted the same? Of course: flavors are flavors. But there's more to eating, as an experience, than flavor. We could say it involves all our senses, not just taste and smell. I'd say there's even more to it. It involves storytelling.

That we tell ourselves stories all the time seems to me to be a given. Without thinking about it, we connect things with other things, try to situate something in relation to something else. Context helps us. But how much does context affect our experience? And in what ways? How much do we need to know about something in order to enjoy it or fully experience it?

Dave Soldier, co-creator of the Thai Elephant Orchestra, suggests playing the Elephant Orchestra's music to someone--anyone--without mentioning the identity of the musicians, and asking your listener if  what they're hearing is music. Almost everyone will say yes, it's music. Many will guess that they're hearing an East-Asian jazz or fusion band. Tell them it's elephants and all intellectual hell breaks loose.

I was witness to this experiment in a world music class. My co-instructor played a track from the Elephant Orchestra's first CD, without introducing or identifying the piece. She then asked the students what instruments (or types of instruments) they heard, and what they could deduce about the musicians and the performance setting. Nobody, of course, guessed that the musicians are elephants--a good example of how we make up stories, how we supply our own context when we aren't given any.

Just how much context we need is anybody's guess (and a question behind all expression.) For several years, I liked the Elephant Orchestra, but more for the idea of elephant musicians than for the actual music the elephants made. Then I watched this video--long but worthwhile--and heard Dave Soldier and Richard Lair tell the story behind the piece "War." Now that I understand more of that story, I really enjoy the piece, and I hear much more in it. Could I have enjoyed the music without the story? Theoretically, yes. But in fact I didn't.

On the vegetable side of these questions, how many people would relish bitter melon if they didn't understand that it's good for them? I am a strange case when it comes to this vegetable; I truly like its flavor and enjoy eating it. But who knows if I like the flavor because I believe that bitter melon is good for me. I don't remember when I first tried it, but perhaps this food came to me with an especially appealing story.

Miso Soup with Bitter Melon

I could tell you a little about this soup. and maybe relate it to elephants or to ideas about context, but I'd rather you tell me: write me a story (just a few sentences) about this soup. What would be a good way to introduce it? What would you like to know about it--or what can you tell me about its ingredients?

1 small onion

1 small bitter melon

about 3/4C diced winter squash or pumpkin

about 1T peanut or grape seed oil

3-4C water 

3-4t sweet white miso paste (start with about 1 generous teaspoon per cup of water)
 (Make sure you use white miso for this recipe; the flavor of red miso doesn't work nearly as well.)


Cut the onion in half and then slice each half into thin (1/8-inch or so "half moons." Cut the bitter melon in half lengthwise. Use a spoon to scrape out the pithy, seeded center of each melon half. Slice the melon crosswise into half moons of similar thickness to the onion. 

Heat oil and saute the onion over medium heat until it's softened. Keep the heat low enough to avoid browning the onion. When the onion has softened, the bitter melon and the squash (or pumpkin), and enough water to make it look like soup. Keep track of approximately how much water you add. Bring to a boil and cook over medium heat for about ten minutes, or until the melon and squash have softened but are not mushy. Turn off the heat.

In a small bowl, dissolve the miso paste in a few teaspoons of hot water. Add this to the soup, stir, and taste. Different misos vary greatly in saltiness and concentration of flavor, so add a conservative amount, then more, if needed. Serve immediately, with rice or a mix of rice and quinoa if, like me, you've been making a place for quinoa in your diet.

The storyteller in me can't resist adding that I used Indian bitter melon today. I prefer to use Taiwanese bitter melon for this soup, but it's very hard to find Taiwanese bitter melon around here in winter. I'd recommend using it for this recipe, though, if it's available to you.

 

Where To Put It?

Any organizer will tell you that stuff needs a place of its own. Without a designated home, the nutmeg-grater will hang out on the counter, or lounge in the dish-drainer after you use it. Without their own space in a drawer or a closet,  homeless T-shirts will slump in a chair or insinuate themselves into the ill-defined textile mass that is probably the clean towels, but it's a little hard to tell because--wait: are there socks in that drawer, too? Stuff piles up; that's its nature. When we establish a home for each bit of stuff, we increase the chances that we will actually get the stuff put away. Makes life more manageable. Makes the stuff itself more manageable, and so, more useable.

In my life, non-physical stuff needs to have its home, too, or it becomes unmanageable, and so, unusable. I had a terrible time meditating anything but very sporadically until I figured out where to "put" meditation in my day.  Some would call this the process of forming a habit, and of course it is, but to me it feels like putting things in their proper place, temporally. Without a home in my schedule, things-to-do might as well be hidden in the mess at the back of a drawer. I don't remember they're there.

  

Every once in a while, I miss something, or remember that I used to use it or do it all the time, and wonder where on earth it went. I root it out and, having learned from those who teach organization, try to find it a proper home. There's  a point in the process when I wander about with the stuff, sometimes literally, wondering where its home should be. (Nope: doesn't fit in that drawer/doesn't fit with the rest of my schedule for Wednesday...Oh! Maybe here...?) It's a bit like (musical) sampling, or so I imagine, if we think of sounds as another kind of stuff. We  start with a really cool or useful or evocative sound. Then we have to figure out where (and/or when) to put it in a piece of music.

At this point in the history of sampling, the integration process is pretty sophisticated, but some early examples have a slightly awkward, "where does this thing go...?" feel to them. Here is Kon Kan, from 1988: I Beg Your Pardon. I think the sampling works on the level of lyrics and ideas, here. Musically, it feels slightly random and pieced together. It's admirable in its own, innovative way, and might encourage those attempting to solidify habits or designate proper homes for stuff; sometimes these things start off feeling awkward, but the process goes more smoothly, becomes more sophisticated and feels more automatic, over time.

Today created places for two homeless things in my life. Blogging and quinoa have been problematic for a while. The problem with blogging: life shifted a bit when my mother moved into town this spring--shifted just enough to tip blogging out of its place. It settled to the bottom of the messy drawer that is my schedule, where I'd occasionally bump into it while searching for something else (yoga class, for example), and miss it, but not actually take the time to make space for it. The problem with quinoa: I haven't cultivated a habit of cooking with it. A bag of it has a physical home in my kitchen, but quinoa doesn't have its own proper place in my meal-planning process.

Solutions came with a recipe for Braised Pears with a Soy-Ginger Glaze from Boston Organics. I wanted to try this recipe for several months, but didn't, because I couldn't think of what to eat it with. It seems to be made for a kind of meat-centered meal I don't eat. I gave up on making it, then realized my friend Sid would have good ideas for accompaniments. He suggested tofu, quinoa. My thought was, "Oh! so that's what to do with the quinoa!" How lovely when these snippets and pieces find a home together, in an evocative song, a daily habit, a good meal, an organized drawer. The whole concept makes me want to get back into the habit of blogging.

We doubled the cayenne and the ginger in the original recipe. We added a dish of tofu stir-fried with garlic, shiitake mushrooms, carrots, scallions and sesame seeds. Quinoa, of course, and some baby kale. The flavors surprised us--equally delicious and unusual, absolutely worth making a place for on a regular basis. The meal was a joint effort, and goes to show how inspiration from  a talented friend not only makes pieces and parts of things find a home together, but also creates a whole much greater than the sum of its parts.