Friday, February 25, 2005
Caltrops: An Introduction
Big day today - committee meeting on eligibility. I was working till nearly midnight reading up for it: you know, dockets, applications, summary project descriptions - good stuff. I then slept deeply and almost without interruption till 5, and now I have only one more day of this week left to endure. Then, this weekend, I get to join a friend from work and someone else cool from the office whom I barely know but whom I intend to know better soon, for a Chinatown History and Cuisine Walking Tour. YES THAT’S RIGHT - the funky-fun stroll I had not long ago among Clement’s weirdest gustatory offerings will now be repeated in Chinatown’s Edwardian alleys and kitchy kitchens. I’ve been doing research, working out, focusing my chi, and now I’m almost ready to go. I just have to wait till it’s actually time to do it. In the meantime, here’s a little essay about how my tourguide friend introduced me to a food I thought I’d known for years:
We met at 11:30 in the lunch room - a space where, before the remodel a few years ago, my desk used to be located. I rarely get up there anymore, for no good reason. Even on that lowering grey day the view was inspiring - the towers of the big grey bridge thrusting up out of the cold grey water into etherial grey clouds, Treasure Island hunkered down on Yerba Buena’s flank, the bay spreading out before me, disappearing into distant mists…
She was already at the brightly-lit sinks, paring a bag of water chestnuts. She showed me what a bad one looked like, how to trim them and peel off the tough skin; she taught me to wash them off and to soak them in water once they were hulled. The caltrops (isn’t that an evocative name for them?) were clumsy, as was I, but the task was sped along by good conversation and her own nimble efforts that made up for my hesitant slow ones, and before long we’d shucked the bunch of them. Then she pulled out the container of catfish stew she’d set aside for me from her mother’s kitchen, sliced up a lime, offered me that vietnamese hotsauce with a rooster on the bottle… I sat down to a bowl of broth thick with tomatoes and squid and onions and nameless vegetables that I recognized from stores where I couldn’t read the signs. It was delicious - tangy and spicy, rich and textured, and I ate it gleefully.
But, though that was one hell of a bowl of soup, it really was nothing more than that. The water chestnuts, on the other hand - they were something altogether else.
She presented them on a small plate, a dozen or so pale orbs that glistened in the halogen glare of the lunchroom lights. Over them she poured a few teaspoonsful of golden cold-pressed flaxseed oil, and with no more ado, urged me to have at them. I thought I knew what water chestnuts were, from countless cans of them I’d opened, drained and munched. I’ve cooked with them in casseroles, stir frys, and rumakoid appetizers. But when that first fresh nugget hit my mouth, I realized I’d been duped.
Those things I’d een eating before - they may once have been water chestnuts, but by the time I ever got to them they’d had their souls sucked out.It’s not that they’d been bad - in fact, I’d always enjoyed them; it’s just that they had, apparently, been dead by the time they reached my table. And this thing I was now eating, it was alive. It shattered and crushed satisfyingly between my jaws, a tactile delight that was heightened by the unction of the flaxseed. Together they formed a smooth creamy confection in my mouth. The flavor was less bland than delicate - a light nutty taste like a sunchoke or jicama, but somehow deeper, richer, more satisfying.
Once I’d swallowed it my mouth immediately craved another, and then another, until the little plate was almost empty. In a gesture of reluctant generosity, I told her the two remaining prizes were hers to enjoy (as, in fact, she’d brought them and I was just a tag-along invitee). She popped one easily in her mouth with chopsticks, and then delicately placed the last one on her spoon and poured all the sunny oil that remained on the little plate over it, letting the final drops creep down with thick slickness, splashing over the single snowy globe that rested in the cup of the spoon. I heard it crunch as she bit down on it. I have desired more for myself from that moment to this one.
Have a great weekend. I’ll take pictures on my tour and if they’re any good I’ll share a few. Till then, eat hearty.
