Pasta Purgatory

I’m the queen of making the same damn mistakes. I always forget to salt the water while it’s boiling before I add the pasta. I’m very impatient while waiting for the onions to caramelize in the olive oil-butter bath before adding the protein. And so usually my pasta is, well, okay. It has good flavor and worse case scenario, I will douse the angel hair or penne with Parmigiano-Reggiano and all will be right in the world. But I want to get it right. Know what I mean? I want the pasta to be perfectly al dente like Rachael Ray’s. I want the garlic and onion to be perfectly caramelized. I want perfection. Perfection is accessible and yet, we settle on the lap of mediocrity, surrendering to that lesser existence, that lesser pasta.

Holy Ghost Chocolate

My grandmother is 103 years old. And she’s amazing. In the mornings, we sit on an elderly porch—her last living sibling and watch the morning fog as it encamps around us like ghosts joining us for a cup of Jamaican chocolate tea. Her fingers are more like rickety wands now, grasping that large mug with the words #1 Grandma fading like the words on my grandfather’s tomb which is just beneath us.  You haven’t had real hot chocolate until you’ve had this tea. The cacao is beaten in a mortar and heated with water, condensed milk, vanilla, nutmeg and allspice. The result is a creamy river of dark chocolate and sweet spice twirling around your palate. You can buy the knock-off cacao from local Caribbean markets. They usually come prepackaged with a dry cinnamon leaf and while they’re tastier than generic chocolate powder, it’s not the same. My cousin brought me some from Manchester last week and I could immediately smell the terroir—the deep, dark, red soil that surrounds the pimento and cacao trees. I can smell my granny sipping time like a true OG.

In the Land of No Ice Cream Cones

I was having one of those days. You know what I’m talking about—avalanching bill collectors, late checks, forgotten invoices, and nothing but everything in the fridge. A day when you find out that the harvest will be late and that the road is even longer than you knew it was.  I was feeling weary and the last thing I wanted to do is post anything on my little blog, but then I ran into this photo I took during a Christmas mission trip to Manchester, Jamaica. I remember this little man—dusty with poverty, rich with charm, oozing the swagger of a true Wailer. He and a bunch of his comrades joined me for popsicles at the local bar. They didn’t serve ice cream cones, just Red Label wine, Red Stripe and popsicles.

Longing for Greens

                               

Today was the end of a chapter. You know how it is. You hold hands. You gaze longingly. You sip Champagne. You frolic through that yummy lie like a wine gypsy wandering through this beautiful, French vineyard I once visited. Everything is green and glossy until the last chapter when the longing gaze looks more like a tired eyeball hoping you’ll stop talking. lol

The Proverbial Pumpkin Soup

When I lived in Brooklyn, I tried to make my mother’s pumpkin soup. I used both canned and real pumpkin and added Polish kielbasa for flavor, but it just didn’t taste as good. This Miami chill beckons the real thing—a spicy soup-stew made of fresh pumpkin, cho-cho (Jamaican word for green squash), turnip, handmade, white dumplings and beef, the perfume of thyme, garlic and onion filling the space like music. Normally I eat the soup with a couple slabs of hard dough bread, but I haven’t recovered from the hard-dough-bread-ferrero-rocher smorgasbord I endured during the holidays. Feel me?   

Circumcising the Grape

When I was 16, I was madly in love with a graffiti-artist slash rapper from Queens. With Hip-Hop making its way to the mainstream, I snubbed my Luke Skywalker-Me-So-Horney roots for Tribe Called Quest’s “Midnight Marauders” as I was obsessed with all things New York. My mother and I recently discussed that whimsical season over a couple glasses of Manischewitz Grape Concord wine, the season when her daughter added hundreds of gray hairs to her precious, Pentecostal head. Queens and I broke up during my spring break visit from Howard University. It was a dramatic ending complete with a bonfire of all the artistic pieces he had given me. “He circumcised me from his life,” I cried to my mother, weeping and wailing, Jamaican-style, my singed, teenage heart leaning on the biblical words I wanted so much to abandon. I remember my mother, who was dually mortified and impressed, sitting with me as I waded through the miry clay of my first heartbreak. She pulled out her holy oil (Pompeian olive oil) from her nightstand drawer, poured a little on her fingers and made the sign of the cross on my forehead. I had de-Pentecostalized myself after I left home, but I still loved when my mother prayed for me. With my forehead cupped in her slick hand, she prayed that the pain would subside and that I would I finish college. Both prayers were answered (eventually lol).

The Sauvginon Blanc Seduction (Courtship Rules)

Long courtships can be magical. But most of us, microwave-minded Americans, wouldn’t know that. Sauvignon Blanc has courted me for years, but I’ve been evasive, secretly snubbing the Sancerre bottles colleagues have deemed royalty. I’m a Viognier-girl. I’m a Marsanne and Roussanne-girl. When I think of Sauvignon Blanc, I think, “white grapefruit.” Big deal. But, this last year I’ve stumbled into some truly intriguing bottles of Sauvignon Blanc. It’s like the guy or girl who’s been asking you out for years and you’ve repeatedly declined. Then he or she says or does something that makes you take notice. Maybe, he references Frida Kahlo, who is your favorite artist of all time. Or maybe, he references a Psalm that you absolutely adore. Suddenly, they’re not as corny. The 2010 Grgich Hills Estate Napa Valley Estate Grown Fumé Blanc is not corny. Apricot, white peach and lavender aromas emerge from white grapefruit, lemon drop, lychee and white pepper flavors. I love the saltiness at the finish, that beautiful minerality that beckons ceviche, yellowfin sashimi and oysters. It’s absolutely delicious and three days later with no fancy wine preserver, it’s still unraveling on my palate. I paired it up with the savory, sweet escovitch fish my father bought from a seaside port in Kingston and it was the promise of an amazing food and wine pairing fulfilled. As I enter 2012, I think of the promises I’ve made to myself but have failed miserably. “This time, I won’t let him…” But I did. And so I make another promise to myself to consider the long courtship over the corny, one-palate wonder.

Moon Over Sinner Food

 

Church food is the best food. Why? In black churches, cooks aren’t just cooking for anybody. They’re cooking for God. And God loves flavor. My church is celebrating its 25^th anniversary banquet, and so my family’s house has been like a pressure cooker for the last 48 hours. Each year, my mother drags my father all over Miami, looking for the best cuts of goat meat and chicken. Prep work is serious. My mother massages chicken with obscene amounts of garlic, thyme, onion, and Nature’s Seasoning. She cleans the goat meat with vinegar, seasons it similarly, but she also adds a bright-flavored Jamaican curry for curry goat. Voluptuous women named Sistah This or Evangelist That pour into the house with smoked, country hams, brown stew chicken, Haitian macaroni au gratin, potato salad, and rice and peas. Most of them are Nurses’ Aids and have just completed double-shifts, but you wouldn’t know it if I didn’t tell you. They have ceaseless energy, offering these gifts with hands that have bathed the sick, comforted the dying and borrowed a necklace or two from the infirmed. But my mother secretly deems her food the best. This year, her sous chef—a new member we’ll call Sistah Jerk, has won the golden jerk award. Guys, her chicken is worthy of heaven’s table—tender, smoky, sweet-spiced, Jamaican jerk perfection. I’m talking glossy-lipped-chew-the-bones perfection. I watched her melt the coconut cream into the gungo peas and rice, and it, too, made the angels lick their fingers clean. Tonight’s full moon will bring in all types of church folk and quasi-church folk. They’ll emerge from dusty bibles. The pungent smell of Holy Ghost stew (manish watah) will lure them in. Most won’t buy dinner tickets, but request juice instead of ginger ale. I’ll serve them. That’s my job—church waitress.

Salt Snob

In 2007, I visited a salt plantation in La Rochelle, France. It was one of those gourmet squatter jaunts that pop up out of nowhere. Anyway, I got a couple bags of salt to take home. One had coarse, gray nuggets that I sprinkled on my organic ground sirloin and pearly racks of lamb and the other was like little speckles of broken, white diamonds I used on salads or to enliven my dips (The peppadew cream cheese is simply amazing). I broke up with Morton and became quite the salt snob. But last night, I used the last of it. Another beautiful relationship ended as I doubt I will be returning to La Rochelle to buy salt anytime soon. Aaaah, but what an intoxicating affair.

Better Than Bedroom Bacon

I woke up with meat on my mind—applewood smoked bacon or chorizo wreathing a soft pile of scrambled eggs seasoned with scallion and red peppers. Maybe a couple slices of toasted and buttered hard dough bread? The perfect gourmet bed bash. But I was in a rush, and I never keep that type of the stuff in the fridge. I raced out of the house, a McDonald’s sausage egg McMuffin-mirage on the edge of the street. I haven’t had McDonald’s in forever. It would be just this one time. The conscious, anti-fast food police would never know. I want to buy the vegan, tofu scrambled eggs with homemade, apple soy sausage and coconut buttered whole wheat toast, but I just don’t have $9 to drop on breakfast right now. As I take that sharp right and head down the boulevard, my car piercing through the Krispy Kreme crack, Taco Bell and Subway-street walkers, I turn into the parking lot on the right. What am I doing here? I’m being led. I know it. The gourmet squatter angels are guiding me. I walk into the restaurant to find Mr. Carrot hard at work. “You’re hungry?” he asks in his Rafiki-in-The-Lion-King voice. He flashes that charming, goatee-framed grin and disappears. He emerges from the kitchen 20 minutes later, hands me the tofu special in a paper bag—McDee’s style. “Go forth. Be great,” he said.

Barefoot Lies

My mother loves Manischewitz Concord Grape wine. To her, it is grander than the most distinguished Sauternes or luxurious Pedro Ximenez dulce. She called me yesterday, her voice as sugary as her favorite wine because she bought a bottle of Barefoot Sweet Red for under $6 and was wondering what I thought of it. My mother is the godmother gourmet squatter, a master at discovering the most sophisticated gourmet fare at half the price. She’s skilled at budgeting in such way that she can enjoy luxurious treats like wild smoked salmon and freshly made turkey sausages. I acquiesce to her ability to sniff free gourmet samples from miles away. But we don’t share the same wine passions. Still, I joined her for a first taste of her new find. It wasn’t tragic. Actually, it was the kind of base I’d use for a summer sangria or as an ingredient for Jamaican black cake. She loved it, smiling at me from underneath her colorful, paisley tie-head. “You like it?,” she asked in her roaring, Jamaican twang, her excitement mirroring that of a child skipping away barefoot on a sugary sand beach, the world and all its pretensions lost in the dawn’s light. “Yes,” I responded. “You too lie,” she said, rolling her luscious, brown eyes at me.

Still Hungry

Still like The Blue Lagoon in Port Antonio, Jamaica

I am still recovering from the turkey binge. I feel heavy as it’s a busy time, the specter of  spent money looming overhead. It’s that time—the closing of the year draws closer. It is the end of things that never began and the beginning of things that never ended. I’m busting at the seams, the guilt of still wanting more and more when there are so many who have nothing. I go through my fridge, foil-wrapped throw-aways staring back at me—the turkey leg, the Basmati rice from four weeks ago, the funky cheese I forgot about and the three year old kremas (an amazing Haitian drink). Yet, I complain about having nothing to eat, my inner-spoiled brat sadistically unquenchable. I drive down North Miami Beach Boulevard, sad faces draping the day with cardboard signs like, “I have cancer, and I have no food” or “Laid-off and Hungry.” Sometimes, I give. Other times, I look away, annoyed, still caught up in my own hunger for quietness, stillness and maybe, more cookies.

Dating Mr. Carrot Part 2

Half veggie and half Portabello mushroom and goat cheese

If you’re just joining me on my Mr. Carrot adventure, let me give you a quick round-up: Had a crush on a guy who looked like Moses (post “Let My People Go”). Mr. Carrot owns a Seven Day Adventist vegan restaurant in the hood. He’s a bit of a carrot-fascist, but he has a beautiful heart. I’m no vegan. I’m food-agnostic. I swing from seitan to steak, but I really wanted to impress Mr. Carrot, so I threw myself into that whimsical world of dried seaweed snacks and astronomically-priced wheat grass shots. He invited me on a date to Andiamo’s—my favorite pizza joint in Miami and then things took a turn for the weird. He had a mini tantrum about the pizza cutter that had been infected with cheese particles. He professed his distaste for wine, and he didn’t know any of the lyrics to Frankie Beverly & Maze’s “Before I Let Go,” which we heard through the patio speakers. We ordered the Ratatouille, a large pie topped with eggplant, zucchini, roasted red, green and orange peppers, caramelized onions, and tomato sauce. Hold the mozzarella and Portobello mushrooms (sigh). The pizza was so pristine, it looked like it belonged in a museum. And it was absolutely delicious, all those fresh ingredients romping around my mouth like naked people going skinny dipping for the first time. But we needed wine. Chianti or a Super Tuscan, perhaps? As I sat there gobbling away, I realized that Mr. Carrot and I had limited romantic prospects. He was way too strict, and he started to fall asleep at the table. I’m serious. He started nodding off. I thought his dredlocks were going to fall into the pie. Turns out he’s narcoleptic. I wanted to shout, “Brother, have a steak!” But that would have changed the mood.       

Andiamo Bricken Oven Pizza, 5600 Biscayne Blvd., 305-762-5751.