The World Is a Kitchen

Tastes of Generosity

BY JUDY WARE

Immortalizing family recipes.

Spanish verbs run amok in my brain. My husband Jim and I are only two weeks into a three-month commitment to learn Spanish in Oaxaca, Mexico. I suggest a getaway day to explore the food of this region where at least fifteen indigenous groups contribute to its diversity. We get lucky. A call to local cooking diva Susana Trilling of Seasons of My Heart fame results in A journey into the secrets of Oaxacan cooking. Now our teacher sits in the front seat of the van, her long black braid brushing the top of my knees.

Her driver weaves through city traffic where blaring horns and exhaust fumes pollute the air. Soon our intimate group views the rural outskirts of the colonial city. Expectations are high as the three other Americans chat about the two days they have already spent with Susana. I listen to their enthusiasm and eagerly await a calm day in her cooking school kitchen. I intend to watch, listen, eat, and grab a fistful of recipes to take home.

Basque Tortilla

BY MELISSA KRONENTHAL

A homesick exchange student finds solace and passion in the kitchen.

The first time you step off the plane into the cool, humid air, you could be forgiven for thinking you’ve arrived in the wrong country by mistake. The landscape is the first clue, particularly if you’ve traveled here from other parts of Spain: parched, arid plains have given way to close-knit, brooding mountains, green and hemmed in by rain clouds. The cities are tucked in between them, huge apartment blocks challenged in height only by the aging black spires of the industrial infrastructure. There is no endless sun, no evening bullfights here; the people you encounter are quieter, more reserved. Signs on streets and doorways mock your grasp of Spanish with their incomprehensible strings of letters containing multiple k’s and x’s, and words like kaixo and eskerrik asko filter their way into the conversation of those around you. And if that’s not enough, when you start talking to people they all ask you how you enjoyed your time in Spain. But, you stammer, I haven’t left Spain!  Yes, they assure you, you have. You haven’t just crossed into another province of Spain, you’ve entered a place that is emotionally, intellectually, and linguistically its own country—the Basque Country, or Euzkadi, as the locals call it.

I was sixteen when I arrived here, exhausted from the transatlantic flight but tingling with both excitement and terror. Ahead of me stretched a year in this strange new place where I would have to learn to function in a new language and adapt to a new family’s routines. I was well prepared for the culture and language shock, and had even steeled myself against the inevitable bouts of homesickness. What I wasn’t so prepared for was learning that my placement in Spain was going to be in a region that didn’t consider itself the least bit Spanish.

Mincing Garlic

BY MICHELE ANNA JORDAN

A lesson in food, a lesson in self.

You might wonder, as do I, just how I ended up somewhere in the mountains of Catalonia trying not to cry. This Spanish town and the circuitous route by which I arrived in it are, at the moment, a proverbial blur.

Let me be more specific. I am visiting a small cooking school and home-stay inn called Catacurian. It has three rooms for students, a beautiful dining room and garden, and a kitchen that made it into an article in a Spanish magazine praising it as one of the ten best kitchens in the world. I like it because it is small, modest and efficient, every inch designed for both beauty and function.

I have just finished mincing garlic, an activity I should have declined given my state of sleep deprivation. But I can mince garlic in my sleep, I think to myself, and so I accept the assignment from the diminutive and feisty proprietor, Alicia Juanpere. I finish my task quickly.

As I walk to the sink to wash my hands, I hear her thick Catalan accent.

“You have not done a very good job,” she announces crossly from across the room.
Under normal circumstances I would have accepted the tease and simply laughed.
Instead, I want to cry.

Chef for a Day

BY BOB RICE

The tables are turned on a trip to the mountains of China.

For about fifty cents a man the Rising Sun bike rental stand, located in front of the No. 2 Guesthouse in Dali, provides me with a sturdy mountain bike and a photocopy of a hand-drawn map detailing sights of interest which lay within a day’s ride. It’s a good thing the bike is built to take some rough terrain since that’s exactly what I encounter. The narrow lanes leading east out of town turn into steep, bumpy paths that pass through cultivated fields before eventually arriving at the shore of Er Hai Lake. Having taken this cross-country route instead of the main road heading south, I get close-up views of people working in the fields and inadvertently startle a young couple making love in a haystack. My goodness, Dorothy, I think we are back in Kansas!

Stopping for a rest and a look at the local Kuan Yin Temple, I find that my visit coincides with two busloads of Chinese tourists. I wait nearly half an hour to take a picture of the temple as these folks block a clear shot by posing in every possible group configuration. My wait turns out to be entertaining, however, as I watch one particular old gentleman. He wears an obviously cherished though threadbare military uniform. Judging from his proud stance and the number of medals displayed on his chest, I imagine he’s been defending China since the days of Genghis Khan.

Before setting out this morning my only breakfast had been a pint of yogurt I’d purchased from Tsho, an eight-year-old ethnic Tibetan girl who has befriended me. Previously, we had swapped some word translations, respectively telling each other the names for eye, nose, ear, tree, and the like. Therefore, I’m hot, tired, and hungry when I arrive in Xiaguan at one P.M. The road from Xiaguan to Dali is mostly uphill and I realize that the return ride is going to be much more strenuous.

The Slaying of the Yabbies

BY LUCY FRIEDLAND

The author overcomes repulsion and trumps her fellow students.

I have no business being in culinary school. I’m slow, clumsy, uncoordinated. Not chef material. Here I am anyway, slogging through a Commercial Cookery course in Sydney, Australia. We’ve covered soup through dessert in just ten weeks, skipping over the main courses. But now the party’s over. No more frilly stuff like canapés and Chantilly cream. We’re in the throes of the Fish and Shellfish module. Crustaceans are on the menu, and we’re staring down a tub-load of live yabbies.

So far, the seafood module has been less distressing than the previous one, Hot and Cold Desserts. By and large, fish dishes don’t collapse, as do soufflés and Bavarian creams. The slumping mounds I presented as Bavarois Rubane didn’t earn me top marks on the desserts exam. I have yet to master gelatin. Tricky stuff—gelatin.

For most of the modules, we’ve had no time to make anything more than once, but during the Fish and Shellfish module, we’ve practiced filleting in a few consecutive classes. I’m more skillful now, using the slender filleting knife to glide along a fish’s skeleton, neatly separating flesh from bone.

I’m apprehensive, though, about the crustacean portion I’ve spent enough time around prawns to know I don’t like them. After backpacking in Asia for a year, I found myself in Malaysia apprenticing with a Chinese chef. Grilled tiger prawns were one of his specialties. That apprenticeship lasted all of two months.