“food”
25 posts under this tag.
The text below was when I fell in love with China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station. I wasn’t sure for many pages, never one to care much for fantasy. But this, this is what fantasy should be.
Reading the book, as many things else, got interrupted by the exile, but I’ve been possessed downloading ebooks lately and I just found a great HTML version of the book. Let the reading recommence!
Isaac and Lin sat naked on either side of the bare wooden table. Isaac was conscious of their pose, seeing them as a third person might. It would make a beautiful, strange print, he thought. An attic room, dust-motes in the light from the small window, books and paper and paints neatly stacked by cheap wooden furniture. A dark-skinned man, big and nude and detumescing, gripping a knife and fork, unnaturally still, sitting opposite a khepri, her slight woman’s body in shadow, her chitinous head in silhouette.
They ignored their food and stared at each other for a moment. Lin signed at him: Good morning, lover. Then she began to eat, still looking at him.
It was when she ate that Lin was most alien, and their shared meals were a challenge and an affirmation.As he watched her, Isaac felt the familiar trill of emotion: disgust immediately stamped out, pride at the stamping out, guilty desire.
Light glinted in Lin’s compound eyes. Her headlegs quivered. She picked up half a tomato and gripped it with her mandibles. She lowered her hands while her inner mouthparts picked at the food her outer jaw held steady.
Isaac watched the huge iridescent scarab that was his lover’s head devour her breakfast.
He watched her swallow, saw her throat bob where the pale insectile underbelly segued smoothly into her human neck … not that she would have accepted that description. Humans have khepri bodies, legs, hands; and the heads of shaved gibbons, she had once told him.
He smiled and dangled his fried pork in front of him, curled his tongue around it, wiped his greasy fingers on the table. He smiled at her. She undulated her headlegs at him and signed, My monster.
I am a pervert, thought Isaac, and so is she.
That above is badly-cooked, over-oiled salmon, soggy rice-a-roni, over-cooked sparragus, plasticky broccoli and cauliflower, overboiled potatoes and yams (you can barely see them above), mung bean sprouts, taro bread, and a strange honey white gourd drink. Phew! It was definitely too much but actually not that bad (might the secret of happiness indeed be low expectations?). It was sort of the first true full meal I cooked ever. Thankfully, I’ve improved.
Una sociedad es subdesarrollada cuando no es ella quien sabe mas sobre si misma, sino que hay otros pueblos que la conocen mejor.
Marcelino Cereijido, Laura Reinking, La ignorancia debida
A society is underdeveloped when it’s not her who knows more about herself, when other countries know her better.
The words came to mind when I was looking for a great Mexican restaurant around town (figured better late than never to get to know my city!) and by far the best online resources I found where English-language Frommer’s and Fodor’s.
I ended up going to Sacromonte and it was excellent. Interestingly, I ate some of the best Mexican food this city has to offer surrounded by foreigners.
Hoy, en la fila para ordenar de Il Tavolo, que siempre es exquisito, habia un grupo de amigas que siendo su primera vez pidieron una enumeracion de lo que ofrecia el bistro. Ya para terminar la retahila menciona el cajero que tenian “tes de raspberry y naranja”. “Naranja y que?”, pregunta confundida una de las amigas (la mas bella, de cejas oscuras y cabellos claros, a la Kate Winslet). “Naranja y raspberry”, responde inmutable el cajero y sigue impasible durante la larga pausa en que la amiga evidencia seguir en ayunas. “Uno de naranja,” acaba respondiendo atolondrada.
Siguieron el resto de las amigas y ya para cuando toco mi turno habia encontrado en mi Blackberry (!) la traduccion de raspberry, que me evadio en ese momento. “Frambuesa!” Es lo primero que le digo al cajero. “Es raspberry en epanhol”. “Es lo mismo”, me responde enfadado. Pero no, no lo es. Porque con frambuesa te hubieras comunicado, con raspberry confundiste.
Lejos, muy lejos, estoy de ser un purista del espanhol o un paranoico anticolonialista (si acaso soy el colonialista…). Como cualquier amigo puede atestiguar y al igual que muchos de ellos, mi lengua materna es el spanglish y hoy en dia escribo (blogs, correos, messenger) casi siempre en ingles siempre que mi interlocutor lo hable aunque sea como segunda lengua. Pero trato siempre que hablo con alguien que solo habla espanhol de anotar mi spanglish natural con sinonimos o parafraseos en espanhol. No hacerlo, no intentarlo siquiera, es lo que me espanto de este cajero. Si no te preocupa que te entiendan, para que hablar?
Ahora que siguiendo esta logica del entendimiento la verdad es que no hay mas que reconocer que sino fuera por flojera, condicionamiento, y, si, pedanteria tendria todo el sentido del mundo sustituir blog por bitacora, messenger por mensajeria instantanea, marketing por mercadeo (la otra vez vi marquetin!), link por enlace y asi (en vez de etcetera, que es nomas latin para “y el resto…”). Hasta ahi todo va bien para los academicos pero porque parar ahi? Por que no es medico de ninhos el pediatra, medico de la piel el dermatologo, musculo del corazon el miocardio, aprendiz por si mismo el autodidacta, inflamacion del estomago la gastritis y asi?
Y bueno, ya siguiendo esta logica de entendimiento hasta sus ultimas consecuencias, por que no aprender Esperanto, “el buen lenguaje”?
The second course, “shrimp and tarragon macaroons”, sang out loud. Clumsy as it sounds, it was among the most beautiful, thoughtful, well-composed dishes I’ve ever had. Three little white puffs sat on a stark white plate; each puff consisted of two meringue-like halves held together with a smear of reduced and pureed tarragon. The puffs had an etheral texture—with a slight pressure from the tongue, they melted—and a haunting, intense shrimp flavor that the tarragon complemented perfectly. Imagine those Indonesian shrimp puffs made by a classically-trained pastry chef, and you’re halfway there.
Beautiful? Thoughtful? Well-composed? Ratatouille did much to made me remember how much I’ve always enjoyed food, but Kandinsky in the Kitchen, the abovequoted review of the New York restaurant WD-50 floored me. I had never read food described with such words before, nor had I seen dishes more beautiful than most paintings, nor had I been so enthralled with so original a combination of ingredients (how about a dish made of cured hamachi, lemon leather, cilantro sorbet and paprika ?).
Another great review of the restaurant by The Gourmet Pig, made me realize the restaurant is part of a much wider movement: molecular gastronomy, the application of science to culinary practice. Apparently they can now compress watermelon to give it the texture of raw tuna.
The pursuit of beauty and meaning will never end, will it?
Food. Hands down.
Though, strangely, if it’s between hunger and lust, then lust. Hands down.
You? Food or Sex? Hunger or Lust?
At what does the watermelon laugh,
when it is being murdered?
Pablo Neruda, The book of questionsEE
It’s watermelon season here in town. Which means the cheapest, sweetest sandias of the year. The green bellies crack open at the slightest cut, roar, and out bulges sweet, sweet candy-cotton. I tell you friends, it’s a good time to be a frugivoreWP mammal.
Been going to spinning daily for several weeks now (and when I say daily, it’s daily daily, not improv’d daily daily). Lately, however, I’ve gone back to hacker sleep and it has noticeably affected my stamina—meaning I get exhausted just mounting the bike and that it’s only minutes before I start mumbling silent insults to that pregnant teacher/bitch who just bosses you around without tasting her own medicine. The interesting thing is that just near the end of the class, when I’m close to fainting and have to cheat and lower the resistance (and when I’m just about to punch that preggo), we relax for a while and I drink some water, some plain old water. And… it takes better than it has ever, ever, tasted before. It lingers in my mouth for a while, because my breath is too fast and I’m choking, and—at least for the first sips—it has texture, I swear it! It’s probably only my congealed saliva mixing with the fresh water (yummy!) but I have sometimes felt—clearly, intensely—as if I was chewing a rare, delicious steak (a Cambalache one!). Oh, the mirage! It’s probably just my subconscious rebelling against my last months of vegetarianism but, boy, if you could only taste it.
Fruits being another perennial fetish of mine this transfixed me. Of course.
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