As distraction and drama dry up and in the space that remains between chores, projects, talks and shows, there has been a lot more gazing out of windows. I notice in these times, a severely underdeveloped sense of imagination; I struggle to see beyond my own patio, the parking lots that surrounds it, the hills on the horizon. I have begun to crave the kind of stimulation I can only get from seeing outside of what I know and my own little story, which is growing threadbare and frayed in its ability to inspire me. I am craving that feeling you get when you visit a new place or connect with a part of the world or the human experience in a way that opens your eyes like a child in wonder.
Books and food act as a bridge or a priming of the imagination. Books get the muscle working and food is a way to bring something new into your entire being, through every sense. Ive always wanted to learn to cook with more flavor and tradition and take a break from America’s general cultural culinary massacre. Luckily I own a few books on that. Two of them I got at a neighbor’s garage sale a few years ago, for $.25 each. No need to haggle there, her prices were more than fair, plus you can’t go down from.25 cents and maintain any dignity. I was drawn to them first by their size and covers. Hard cover, 8x10s with simple photographs and the titles on the spines. They feature long prose, philosophy, basic recipes and full page photography about the regions of India and the Nine Nations of the Middle East. I started reading the later this morning and I have a feeling I am going to become very intimate with eggplant.
I also own a more straightforward cookbook called Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant, a place of dining in Ithaca, NY which up until the pandemic, had operated for 46 years. This restaurant and the book has earned all sorts of critical acclaim and features healthy, most vegetarian cuisine from all over the world. Someone I’d prefer not to remember, gave me this book and I’d like to think that they never even opened it and that someone had given it to them. I’d like to think they didn’t appreciate it, like they didn’t appreciate our friendship, or the person who gave it to them because they didn’t try any of the recipes and they so easily passed the book on to someone who they didn’t really care about. I’d like to imagine that the person who had ear-marked the pages was an older woman maybe in her late sixties, early seventies. She’s sported a perfect purple bob for a few years now and owns variety of aprons to match her cooking mood. She poured through this book when she needed inspiration, or when she felt lonely and made most if not all of the recipes and folded the corners of her favorite ones. She had friends of friends who owned the restaurant and they would meet and swap tips and secrets and stories of how they fumbled their way through cooking and life.
One of the first regions featured in Sunday’s at Moosewood is South Africa and the first tagged recipe, which the book opened easily to, was Tofu Bobotie. I liked the way it sounded, in title at first but then the recipe too. I like that it put the tofu first. No shame there, just, “this is who I am. I. am. Tofu.” Bobotie? What is a… bobotie? I prefer a phonetic pronunciation of bo-bo-tie but apparently it is pronounced ba-boor-tea. It is typically made with meat, as a means of stretching it, because in many parts of the region meat is a delicacy and so, hence the tofu. This information makes the act of putting tofu first in the title less rebellious, however, as told in Star Wars, Rogue One- “Rebellions are built on hope.” And so is Tofu.
As soon as I added the spices to the onion and garlic saute, I knew that there was no need to hope; it was going to taste good. It smelled amazing- so good you just didn’t want to stop sniffing, like you do when you have a really bad fart of your own- you are proud, intrigued. I made some mistakes in the cooking process, which I forgive myself for. I now give myself total freedom to completely mess up, especially when trying something for the first time. I forgot to take the tofu out of the freezer when it came time to assemble and had to use the microwave to defrost it. Despite that it crumbled just fine, and I discovered a refreshing new method for riding tofu of excess water, as it squeezed effortlessly out and produced dry, almost feta-like crumbles. I didn’t have the right sized pan and so the egg and milk mixture spilled over and ended up at the bottom of my oven. Kate came over for dinner and had managed to come by some mint, so I was able to pair it with the mint cucumber refresher sauce and rice, as suggested. I fell immediately in love with it, before I even took a bite. I ate it for every meal until it was gone.
If I try, I can imagine eating Tofu Bobtie or something different, at the Moosewood Restaurant in upstate New York. I’ll probably deliberate for a while, pouring over the menu on the outdoor patio, biting my fingers at the task of making such a monumental decision. The evening sun is warm but the air is cooling and our server is patient. It is late summer and my lover and I have just returned to civilization after weeks of living on lakes and rivers and traveling by canoe in the Adirondacks. We know no one there but its obvious there are plenty of old friends and acquaintances catching up and we are brought into the folds as we drink white wine until the sun goes down and tell stories of the time we all lived through a pandemic.
