Jeff Koehler arrived Tuesday night, driving down from Seattle in pouring rain the likes of which this spot of earth hasn't seen in many a day. He was the same as always--talkative, full of odd stories and curious, jaunty energy. On Wednesday I took him up to Clark College where he read his piece "The Lotus-Eaters" that had been published in Tin House a few years ago and then re-published in Food & Booze: Essays and Recipes, an anthology put out by Tin House Books. He also took questions from the small audience, covering topics such as how he got into food and travel writing, the relationship of food to culture in the Mediterranean region, and the pitfalls involved with photographing the food you're writing about. It was a very pleasant hour. Afterward, we went shopping for the evening's meal at Trader Joe's and New Seasons. It's always a great pleasure to shop for food with Koehler as he loves to chat with the grocers and the butchers and wine sellers, nosing out interesting morsels of information. The wine shopping was particularly fun: I took him to my favorite wine shop, Vino, in Sellwood. He met the proprietor, Bruce Bauer, a man who had read Jeff's work and followed some of his dining suggestions while visiting Barcelona not long ago. Bruce (as we all are now) became a big fan of Bar Pinocho in Barcelona's Boqueria, the large central market just of La Rambla. He and Jeff effected a trade: a bottle of wine for the recipe for a Pinocho dish containing chick-peas and blood sausage. I've had it too, and it's worth a whole case of wine, if you ask me! For lunch, we went across the street to Kiko's Taqueria, a taco cart on the corner of Spokane and 13th. For my money, the best one dollar street tacos in town. Jeff loved them.
In the evening, Jeff cooked us two risottos--one with scallops and mushrooms and the other with parmesan and herbs. For a starter we had fresh figs, melon, and prosciutto. For dessert, K made wonderful lemon pudding cakes. We finished the evening with some Trillium absinthe, an Oregon product. We followed the time-honored ritual: glacier-cold water poured over a sugar cube into a shot of the liquor. The result is a green cloudy drink tasting strongly of anise--not unlike ouzo in flavor--but, for me, tastier. Alas, no green faeries appeared to waltz me into the stratosphere; I just found myself slack-jawed and dozing off in a livingroom chair.
I took Jeff to Powell's City of Books this morning so he could look up a few volumes on the history of Latin America, part of the research he's doing for a future book project. Again, it was great to prowl those hallowed aisles with him. Before hand we had a coffee and a treat at one of my favorite Portland bakeries, The Pearl Bakery, just a block away. He enjoyed one of their award winning gibassiers. I, however, avoiding anything licorice flavored (ahem) was quite content with a chocolate croissant.
Adeu, Jeff Koehler! I look forward to that next visit--possibly in a year--to promote Rice, Pasta, Couscous: The Delicious Heart of the Mediterranean Kitchen.
~
Whether or not distilled wormwood really has hallucinogenic properties is debatable, but there is no debate that these five things get me "high": (1) Taschen books. My favorite publisher of art books. 25th anniversary editions (at very affordable prices) are out now: Matisse, Schiele, Expressionism, Two Volumes of European sculpture--these have all come my way. (2) The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Irving's story is an American classic, and as we know, and as Hemingway once pointed out, that means it has been relegated (unfairly) to the children's shelf of the library. LSH is a rich, complex, and hilarious metafiction written two hundred years before the postmoderns invented that word. (3) The character Tom Ripley in Patricia Highsmith's novels (which is really to applaud her artistry in the creation of him). How did she make me admire--to the point that I envy him--a murderous sociopathic epicurean expatriot con-artist? (4) Salted and oiled Marcona almonds . We bought two packs of them at New Seasons the other day and I cannot stop eating them. Are they the finest almonds in the world? No doubt. (4) Robert Graves' poem "The Naked and the Nude". I often have my poetry students read this to illustrate to them the idea of connotation. How is it that the "naked" are simply without clothes but the "nude" are up to something?
The Naked and the Nude
For me, the naked and the nude
(By lexicographers construed
As synonyms that should express
The same deficiency of dress
Or shelter) stand as wide apart
As love from lies, or truth from art.
Lovers without reproach will gaze
On bodies naked and ablaze;
The Hippocratic eye will see
In nakedness, anatomy;
And naked shines the Goddess when
She mounts her lion among men.
The nude are bold, the nude are sly
To hold each treasonable eye.
While draping by a showman's trick
Their dishabille in rhetoric,
They grin a mock-religious grin
Of scorn at those of naked skin.
The naked, therefore, who compete
Against the nude may know defeat;
Yet when they both together tread
The briary pastures of the dead,
By Gorgons with long whips pursued,
How naked go the sometime nude!
--Robert Graves
Clearly nude!
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