Fair and Free Trade

Okay, who likes to cook? I love cooking almost as much as I like eating. After all, everyone’s got to eat (And you time travelers reading this in some nth dimensional archive structure embossed in a grain of sand somewhere in the Library of Congress - because that’s just how damn popular I am amongst the 4000AD jet set crowd, y’all, sorry but I gots ta roll how I roll – you just keep your mouth shut about intravenous submolecular nutrition implants, thank you very much, different language time.) and if you’re going to eat, anyway, you might as well enjoy it, right? Although, I did hear a weird story about some kind of creature who resembled my breed of human – though perhaps born without taste buds, at the least, malfunctioning ones - who derives no satisfaction from the sensual and sensory experience I’ve come to call eating. I call her my girlfriend. She just munches and munches away and doesn’t really care one way or the other because it all comes out the same at the end (Hooray, first poop joke. At least I made it a day before I went there).

Not me, I love to cook. And, in case you haven’t noticed, I like to try new things and new experiences and new flavors and new tastes. And I’m also the sort of person who can find meaning at the bottom of my shoe if I look hard enough – just don’t tell me I’m looking in my navel, please. So, let’s see if I can’t wrap the act of cooking into my current favorite metaphor of evolution (It explains so much, seriously, just give it a chance. Forget the science, forget the bias, forget the meaning, remember the metaphor and we’re talking the same language in a different way.). But evolution without mentioning it at all through another of my little favorites – the anecdote.

The other day I wasn’t doing much of anything. You know, the usual, some household chore or another. And to keep my brain from overheating and expanding out of my ears into unreal space, as it is wont to do from time to time, I need to keep my language virus fed. So, I tuned on the TV as I was dusting or vacuuming or painting or whatever it was that I can’t quite remember I was doing. Flipped it through a few channels, found something halfway interesting that might drown out my feverish thoughts so that I didn’t accidentally, say, stick a nail through my foot by accident again. Left the aptly named boob tube on as I busied my way through the day. One program jumbled into another into another as, well, you know how it goes, those chores just pile up and up until you actually bother to get them done. And they always take longer than you think they will. It’s a hassle, sure, but it does give me time to quiet down and find one of my centers every now and then.

Just a restful, peaceful time as I go about the business of keeping my hose clean and not falling down around my ears. Time ravages everything around us. And as it does so I find it oddly restful to have something droning on in the background. When it rains I can listen to the pattern of the droplets falling from the heavens to land upon my house in a gentle pitter pat. But the skies were clear and the sun was shining and summer’s turned to fall and fall turns to winter and I’d much rather have been outside enjoying the crisp autumn weather. The sharp, tangy scent of the leaves, the ever-so-subtle brittleness of the grass, and that chill bringing a warmth to my skin even as it numbs my senses. But, no, those chores weren’t going to do themselves. So, with no rain I listened to the staccato bursts of the voices of strangers. Strangers become friends, if you give them a chance, I’ve always heard. And as I half-listened to one voice become another and another I found myself half-listening, half-watching a cooking show. Hadn’t meant to, of course, but I found it strangely appealing. The man, the sensibly dressed older man with a head of peppery hair and a smoth, calm, low voice and a pair of slacks to match spoke to me like a friend. That always interests me because he was giving me a chance. So I took a chance back and listened in a bit better than before.

And I’m glad I did because by the end of the show I’d come away with something I hadn’t had before – a new recipe. A head full of them, in fact. And, well, I just managed to use one of them for my supper this very night and thought I’d pay it forward a bit by sharing what I found. The recipe is very simple.

First, you’ll need a bit of a coarse salt – sea salt or kosher salt should do. Then, a bunch of rosemarry – fresh if you can. One lemon’s worth of rinds. And a turkey for roasting.

Next, preheat your oven to however it is you like to cook your bird, I suppose. I’ll admit I didn’t use a turkey because the store was having a sale on cornish hens this week. And, well, it’s not what I normally eat but every now and then I like to give myself a little surprise. Then take your salt and your rosemarry and your lemon and dump them in a food processor and grind them up until they’re all about the same size and mixed up with each other. You should have about as much of each in there as you like, of course. Then, take a bit of olive oil – not too much, now – and rub it into your bird. I didn’t use olive oil, I used a bit of butter as I didn’t have any fresh lemons – store was right out, can you believe it? – and so instead I mixed some lemon juice in with some melted butter. Makes the skin brown nicer, anyways, and any fat will do. You just need something to stick the flavor infused salt onto your bird as you rub it over the skin. Which you should do next, of course. Apply it liberally, especially if you’ve got a big roast to cook. Stuffing I’ll leave up to you, I’ve always found that a bit of herbs – stems attached – or something like garlic and onions work best and let me roast more quickly than something I intend to pull out of the bird and eat later. Just infuse a little bit more flavor into the whole thing with some aromatics would be my suggestion. I’ve done it before but not today as there’s really not much room to stuff a Cornish Hen. Throw the thing in the oven, breast side up (made that rookie mistake – again – myself tonight), set your timer and walk away. If you want to come back and baste it with some more tasty lemon butter like I did then that’s fine but in an hour or so you’ll have a roast bird creature of some kind. Remember to allow it time to rest as all proteins should be rested after cooking for…oh, call it five minutes to allow the juices you’ve been boiling to settle back down. That way when you cut it they’ll stay in the meat and not all over your plate.

If your results are anything like mine you’ll wind up with a wonderfully and interestingly flavored, simply done, and great looking bit of poultry (And, if you’re like me then a bit of leftover rosemarry-salt to toss around.). Never forget that the eyes are a sense, too, and we eat with them just as much as with touch and taste and smell. It’s sensory, after all. And that salty yet natural taste run through with notes of green herbs and the faintest sharp tang of lemon is a treat for a lot of senses. Not what I usually make, mind. I like stir frys and pilaf and such – one dish meal. Simple, tiny flavorful worlds in their own right. And a few less dishes to do than tonight because I wanted some dressing – day old bread and celery and some rosemarry and other goodness - and a salad, too, and those dishes don’t wash themselves, you know. But if I’m going to eat a nice, fancy looking meal I’m going to do it like I mean it.

Here’s my thing, I only made that recipe because I remembered it from however many days, if not weeks, ago – so far back I can hardly remember must have been a long time, right? But I also only made it because the store happened to have a sale on Cornish Hens, something I haven’t had in a long time and have never made for myself. Because, yeah, sad to say I was dining alone tonight. Oh, I had company, to be sure, but I wasn’t with the one I wanted to be with. That I call my girlfriend, remember. And although I’ve had Cornish Hen, I’ve also had just about every critter on gods green earth from insects to that mamoth cow I butchered on that sunny, dusty, dingy ranch so long ago. My girly, though, she’s not the adventurous type. Not when it comes to food, anyways, because she just munch munches away at anything put in front of her. But, oh, how I try and fill her with all sorts of things. Stews and sauces and spices and more. But what she likes best are the simple, efficient, elegant things. Because I really bought the bird because they were sold in packages of two. And I thought it’d make for a nice, romantic candle-lit dinner. A few burning flames in the darkness, a plate for each, and a tiny little bird presented with loving care, one apiece. Now that I’ve sampled my newfound recipe, I wonder what else I can do with combining different herbs and tangy rinds. And different oils and butters with their own flavors. Because it’s subtle, a minor little note to the strong symphony of the proteins and lipids that make up the poultry, but it’s an elegant little thing. A romantic, intimate, sensual thing that dances on your tongue and the back of your throat. Because if you just munch, munch you won’t get it at all. So maybe it’s lost on my girlfriend and I’ll be the only one enjoying it. But I’m just going to tuck that recipe in the back of my mind and the next chance I get for a special little meal (But, then, aren’t they all?) I’m going to shuffle through my imaginary filo-fax and see what can be seen.


Okay, pencils down. Minds out of the gutter and stop thinking about sex. Here’s the question, why is it I can do thing like that as a lark but I just can’t bring myself to crack the whip and get my fucking novel done!?!?