November

"Likewise for Tita the joy of living was wrapped up in the delights of food. It wasn't easy for a person whose knowledge of life was based on the kitchen to comprehend the outside world."
         – from Like Water for Chocolate





BLT & Poached Egg Salad

1Tbsp Dijon Mustard
1 tsp minced shallot
1/4 tsp sugar
Salt and freshly ground pepper
4 Tbsp white wine vinegar
3 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
6 slices thick-cut bacon, coarsely chopped
6 heads Little Gem lettuce
2 cups halved cherry tomatoes
4-6 large eggs

Preparation:


The most important thing when poaching eggs is to take care to drop the egg in the boiling pot slowly and be sure to aim for the sides.  Too many eggs boiling in the middle of the pan will begin to join together and before you know it the water is very inedible white foam.  Do not become too attached to the success of any one of these eggs for one will surely disappoint you.  I know this from trying to poach in a previous kitchen in which I was quite certain that one of mine that I dropped in the not hot enough water might hatch to a small chick and fly up across the small herb garden outside the door and disappear in the corn.  Try to remember that the perfect little incandescent bulb of a successfully poached egg will, as soon as you poke it with your fork, turn to soup anyway, a bit like the magical trick of now you have it, now you don't.  Grandfather used to toss his poached eggs in the air to test their 'durability' as he called it.  If they rose two feet in the air, then back into the palm without breaking, he gave a wide grin then curled his lips under his profound mustache and bent over to save them in his secret poaching bowl as if they were found gems.

Grandfather was indeed much a magician in the kitchen as he was not any sort of trained chef.  It was said that Grandpa was born only capable of speaking French language.  He had been raised, it was true, in Soldiers Grove Wisconsin on a small dairy farm but he was born on a warplane in the

Great War years in flight somewhere over the Atlantic between Toulouse France and New York.  It was only at seven years old, the family story goes, that he became bilingual and could say his name in English. Each day he was known for leaving the counter tops and sinks clinking with tipping stacks of uneven dishes, pots and pans two and three thick.  Flour dusted in every corner of countertops, vegetable knives and granules of tossed salt found in the cracks near warped wooden cutting boards.  There were, as we remembered, pockets of extraordinary smells in various parts of his kitchen.  Onion stations merged in with day old broth simmering under the fat hood of the old stove.  He had planted a wood burning stove in the opposite corner where he might be heating black bean and

parsnip stew.  How could one interrupt such necessary concentration?  Grandmother might display dishes on the table or Marie might turn the wooden spoon in the lemonade as if by automatic instruction.  This is how I learned to cook – there were no lists of severe rules. Every item had its life and feel.  It knew, itself, when it was to be done.  It was only in the imagination of the cook that decided to communicate with the components of each dish.