This list includes one of my strangest forays yet--this morning I gave a try at nopales, or, as the white girl from the Midwest would call it, prickly pear cactus leaves. I've been experimenting with Latino cuisine lately, or trying to without creating as the movie "Tortilla Soup" would call the dishes, "mutts." I try to stay authentic. That belongs to Mexico. This belongs to Chile. That's Brazilian. I'm about as successful at it as my background will allow (to be fair, seven years ago I thought a burrito was a frozen tube about as big around as a hot dog with just beans and cheese, so I have made progress), but I'm making apologetic effort. I have to admit, I have had my culture mistaken before, so I try not to f up that of others'. (Despite popular belief, not everyone who hails from the Ozarks is a redneck and not everyone from rural Ohio is Amish. Just sayin'.) I've been making visits to a Mexican grocery lately for the freshest ceviche ever--come to find out that nearly all Latinos are practicing Catholics and the freshest ceviche can be found on Fridays during Lent in Mexican groceries. (I told my brother the agnostic fisherman this and there was a pause followed by "Huh. Never woulda guessed." This is what happens when you're among the heathen, like my brother and myself. Completely out of my radar as a Unitarian as well.) While visiting said grocery, I have been studying a culture in a language I can't speak, which is sort of like reading the Tao Te Ching--I'm calmed by something my soul understands but my ears don't. And part of that calm is embracing the strange.
Strange to me, I must clarify.
We don't cook with cactus in the Midwest, in case you didn't know or don't have a way of knowing. The closest I've come to chopping cactus was slicing off leaves of an aloe plant in my mother's living room, a plant that was roughly the size and reach of a baby octopus, for treatment of burns. You take a paring knife and take a piece without getting pricked by the edges and smear the clear, cool goo from the wounded plant on the angry welt on your skin. Sticky, soothing. Then chuck the severed remainder of aloe in the compost and watch the shortened leaf left on the plant heal over like an amputee. It's an intriguing process. The last time I went to the Mexican grocery and I was in the produce section and paused over the nopales, remembering that monster in my mother's living room. I was with a Latino friend at the time. "What's that taste like?" I asked, with my newly developed pointing technique perfected as one surrounded by a language she can't speak. He didn't really answer, he sold me instead. "They're good. You boil them, a little salt, a little oil. Or put them with scrambled eggs. You want some?" Are you kidding? This is me we speaketh of, the girl who's tried turtle, elk, and nine kinds of wine. Hell, yes, let's do this. Except, um, how do you clean 'em?
I should mention that you can buy nopales pre-cleaned, which is probably what I'll do if I don't invest in gloves. There was even someone cleaning and chopping them there at the grocery, but what is the fun of that? I wanted to get my hands dirty, or injured, in this case, so we loaded me up with three leaves and with our ceviche hit the road. I planned on cooking them yesterday, but suffered stage fright--what kind of hubris makes a white girl think she can make Mexican food?
This morning I got up and visited our neighborhood Farmer's Market in the rain, looking for onions, tomatoes, and cilantro to made a salad, which was also suggested for the nopales. No tomatoes. I should have known better--cold winter. No matter, I thought, let's try it with eggs. I came home and started in on the cleaning, which is roughly on par with scaling fish; I felt like I was getting thorns everywhere. Then they were cleaned and it came time to chop them, at which point the aloe memories returned with the clear ooze. I thought nothing of it, nothing that is until I had boiled them and discovered the water didn't cook out the ooze. I probably did something wrong in the preparation, but they do have a great flavor: a mixture of mild and sharp, like a string bean crossed with an onion. I had about three bites and had to give up though--every bite felt like it was coated in dish soap. This is gonna take practice.
*****
I'm not limiting myself to culinary or vintner risks lately. For those of you who have ever lived in a mountainous locale, this analogy will make sense. There are times when you drive through mountains with multiple options for backroads and you see the one you should have taken--you can either backtrack and try again (depending on how far you've traveled), you can make do with the one you're on until it becomes impassable, or you can look below you on the slope and see the road you wanted and, well, jump.
I'm four years into backtracking.
The road is too rough and is beating the crap out of my transport.
But I can see the road I want. You know what this means.
It means I have to jump. I may crash and burn getting to the right road. I may make it to the right road and take a wrong turn in two miles and end up back on this one. But I never thought I would see that road again.
If you believe they put a man on the moon...
Well, I have to.
Shortly I am taking a risk bigger than sharp thorns, bigger than the mild wine, bigger than a blind date. I was thinking about that on the way out of the grocery, the friend with me talking about the decisions we make to make sense, why some choices are made and some choices are forfeited. I forfeited a trip to graduate school in the event of a terminally-ill parent. I forfeited 31 years without lamb because I believed my father when he said I wouldn't like it (yes, he was wrong). I forfeited a car for a friend who said the trip to New York wouldn't cost anything more than food and airfare. I forfeited a pet for San Francisco.
Water under the Golden Gate Bridge, but here's the rub.
I'm still single.
I still live in my favorite City.
And I still think God is trying to tell me something. There's a road below me. Time to jump.
Onward, dear reader. Hang on.
No comments:
Post a Comment