Thyme & Peach Tart

If there were a song for thyme, I think it'd be this one; a comforting, familiar tune. And if it were a color, I think it'd be the soft green of where the sky's blues meet sunset's yellows, a watercolor-like mixture of light that is surprising and subtle, sometimes hard to see. Just so, I find thyme's flavor hard to pull out when it's blended with other ingredients; it's there and then gone, not delicate so much as just laying low, maybe sitting in the corner ready to tell you a great joke if you just lean a little closer.

This Summer Clove

The end of summer has a piercing quality to it—a nip in the air in the morning, a pang of wistfulness for all the long days and porch evenings now dwindling quickly down a spiral staircase towards New England's base season: winter.

I could say I suffer from this malaise, but I actually favor autumn and winter to summer here in Boston, and besides, most spices are best featured in the warming foods popular to these seasons.

BUT.

Smoked

Deeply familiar, as though residing in the very DNA of what makes us human, this flavor: smoke.

The flavor of early cooking, of that ancient process. Maybe it was an animal over a fire, dripping blood that makes the fire spark and sputter, and the smoke channeling upwards into the dark and staining the air with its scent. The cooks do not speak, for it's not the language of spoken words that's necessary, or even sight, but scent - an animal language. The flavor goes as far back as the myth of our imaginations will allow but is now infused into so many of our foods it's as though we need this flavor to survive.

That Vegetal Feeling

In Boston this morning it was raining hard. A beautiful, heavy rain that was musical, like a whole bunch of pianos being hit softly and randomly by nine year olds. Morning thunder and the lights flickering a little and a cup of coffee and some dehydrated kale.

Roses for Survival

Sometimes I think it's necessary to listen to Jim Croce. This song, in particular. 

His voice is so comforting, kind of lazy and flannel-like, that when my shoulders are tense and I feel crazy, like I've just woken up from a dream yelling "Not again!" because escaped prisoners are throwing cabbages at me (again), the sound of a voice that is grounding and sweet and nostalgic, like Croce's, is all I need. That and maybe some strawberry rose-petal jam on toast.

Simmer Down

It is odd to be thinking about soup stock as we celebrate the start of summer. The days glow with green and sun and even the rain is warm and offers the chance of rainbows. I think of this poem, The Fish, by Elizabeth Bishop, because of the simple but complex moments of beauty that catch us sometimes in the summer, whether fishing or not. I feel at once like the fisherman and the fish—wanting to hold on, wanting to be let go. Stay still, think, be present, savor. Run, leap, dive deep, release.

Ephemeral

I remember learning the spring ephemerals in college - trout lily,  quaker lady, Virginia bluebell, violet. We'd wander through the woods behind some housing development with a notebook, crouching to study the flowers, hoping the latin would stick.

Sky, Dirt, Basil

My final week of traveling before I headed home to Boston was in Chiang Mai, Thailand where I really learned how to use a mortar and pestle. You can't be a wimp about it, especially when you're working with hard, dried spices and woody ginger and lemongrass. You have to be strong. And patient. Even zen.

The Art of Capture

Sitting in Laurent Severac's kitchen in Hanoi, Vietnam while he and his assistant sorted through a pile of rose geranium leaves, I wondered about scent and its ability to locate us in a time and place. Smelling the green, rosy fragrance of the geranium leaves brought me instantly back to last spring, when I concocted a drink at the café where I used to work, made of pureed cucumber, lemon and rose geranium syrup. It was refreshing and aromatic; perfumed but not cloying. I used the same recipe as a base for a punch at my brother's wedding. Suddenly this plant was connected to a whole host of memories.

Vietnam Amuse-Bouche

I ate so much in Vietnam I feel like I'm still full, still digesting every flavor. I traveled from the south (Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon) to the cool mountainous city known as Dalat, then further north to Hanoi.  I only had a ten day slice of a country that was so packed with flavor it would take a lifetime to explore them all.