Jaki Jean on Cooking

Sunday, June 2, 2013

While I realize it is self-absorbed to admit it, I love the way the house smells when I cook.

Today I am making Estofado Verde con Pollo – a green stew with chicken.  Chicken tenders browned in peanut oil, cut up small for Jean.  Pureed tomatillos, a head of roasted garlic, mild green chilies, carrots, green onions, calabicita.  Ginger, lime.  Herbs from my garden –cilantro, oregano, basil. 

 

With her Parkinson’s, Jean cannot navigate tortillas.  So I will make corn muffins to go with her stew.  And for dessert (because Jean loves dessert), we will have melon.

I love soft, warm corn tortillas, with a splash of lime & salt, dipped into the broth of this stew.

Savoring the scent of the stew, I wonder where I can plant tomatillos without them taking over the entire garden.  

I also wonder how I developed this intense connection to cooking.  Jean did not take me into her kitchen & show me how to cook.  I watched from time to time, observing. 

But I never expressed an intense desire to learn how to cook.

During the short duration of my marriage, I perused recipe books received as wedding gifts & cooked because cooking was part of my perception of what a wife brought to the table.

After I left my marriage, my friend Louise, who was a fabulous cook, encouraged me to cook for myself.  Advice given to her by her mother when Louise’s marriage ended.  

At least once a week, cook an entire meal.  Take out the cloth napkins & china & fine glasses & prepare a feast for yourself.

I think that is where it began, my passion for creating in the kitchen.

That & Julia Child on PBS.

When I moved out of singlesville to inside the Loop & Montrose, my friends Marguerite & Richard Pulley introduced me to a plethora of fine cooks.  And what I learned from them was better than attending a culinary school.

From Marguerite, I learned to appreciate the cooks among us.

From Susan Chambless, I learned where to find a wealth of recipes – in the Houston Junior League Cookbook.  Susan also introduced me to a truly finely prepared corned beef & cabbage dinner; the wonder of tamales & champagne; chicken fried dove breasts, surrounding a jalapeno, drenched in gravy. 

From John Chambless, I learned that basil & black olives go well with good tuna salad.  Not to mention how to make nutritious food for geriatric dogs.

From Linda Garren, I learned that it is possible to make an omelet in cast iron, that it is insane to buy canned cranberry sauce when it is so easy to make fresh, that it is ridiculous to buy grated parmesan when you can buy a chunk & grate it yourself & save money.  And that the beauty of a big kitchen is you can assign tasks to the guests, sip wine & share stories.

From my Alpha Son Nick’s father I learned to appreciate green olives in a venison stew, the value of a country pate & how to fry eggs with a bit of vinegar & herbs.  And how to boil & serve lobster.

Of course there are others.  

Rie Davidson who coated a platter of brie with green salsa & served it with chunks of a baguette.  Connie Tuthill who carved out a purple cabbage & filled it with blue cheese dip, accompanied by fresh vegetables resting in carved out bell peppers.

I still use both presentations.

Cooking is a gender neutral passion.  I can recall every meal prepared for me by a man – not just the menu, but the presentation.  Who used cloth napkins, who prepared a vinaigrette for the salad, who served the best wine & the most tempting desserts.

I remember those meals with more clarity than the meals served me in restaurants.  Although the men in & out of my life & my bed fed me very well. 

I learned to eat escargot at a restaurant in Houston, to appreciate Thai & Vietnamese cuinsine in Paris (where I also learned I did not like tripe).  I first experienced Indian food in London.  I tasted vintage port at La Colombe d'Or & Eggs Sardou at Brennan's.

One evening, I learned that you can send the wine back & challenge the wine steward to a test:

Open every bottle in the case.  If every bottle is not bad, I will buy the case.

The entire case of wine was flawed.  The wine steward paid for dinner.

But I only remember snippets of those meals.  Snippets of the conversations that took place. 

Not like the detail I remember of the meals a man prepared for me.  I can visualize how each of them moved in the kitchen, creating.  The dishes each used, the pots & pans & utensils & wine glasses.  And the conversations that took place on those evenings.

Perhaps I paid more attention, recognizing in those chefs something of myself.  I am comfortable in the studio of a kitchen, confident of the creation that will emerge from my efforts.  

All of which is rather dramatic, isn’t it?  After all, it is only food.

Food that nourishes, food that satisfies, food that touches & stimulates & heals.

Hell, yes, it is dramatic.  And fierce.

In my youth, I cooked to impress or seduce.  To provide the most spectacular stuffed mushrooms, the perfect soufflé, Coquilles Saint-Jacques à la Parisienne, Spinach Fettucine with Artichoke Mushroom Sauce, amazing quiche.  The perfect filet mignon with béarnaise sauce. 

Anything Julia Child cooked.

Raising my sons, I still cooked spectacular stuffed mushrooms, many a soufflé, scallops & mushrooms in white wine sauce, amazing quiche & that famous artichoke & mushroom sauce over fettucine.  I also served macaroni & cheese.

My Alpha Son Nick told his kindergarten teacher that lobster was his favorite food.  He also refused to eat sandwiches until he was five.  Omega Son Sam refused almost anything without ketchup.  Eventually he grew out of the ketchup obsession.

Today both of them cook.  For themselves, for & with others.

I wonder if it feels for them the way it feels for me.  If they sense its meaning, the providing others with something important to our survival as civilized beings.

Now I cook for Jean, focusing on protein & Vitamin C & antioxidants & iron & calcium. 

The focus has changed, the passion moving from creating something impressive to creating something healthy, nourishing, satisfying.  Something that stimulates & heals.

El Estofado Verde con pollo estaba delicioso.

Dinner with Richard

Last week I met my friend Richard Pulley for dinner at Spanish Village.

And for a brief moment, time stood still.

In the ever changing landscape of Houston, Spanish Village has survived for over fifty years.   

I first went to the Village when I was married to Mr. Barnhill.  The garage doors opening onto Almeda Street were open.  Accustomed to El Paso Mexican cuisine, I was appalled when my chile relleno came out in a green bell pepper instead of a poblano.

A few years later, after I left Mr. Barnhill, I rediscovered Spanish Village.  I can no longer remember if I first re-visited the Village with Richard’s wife Marguerite for a working lunch or if it was the day Marguerite found me an apartment in the inner city.  That day, John Chambless drove us to the Village in a very cool car.

What I do remember are the conversations & companionship, the insane consumption of margaritas, the waiters recognizing us by name & knowing our standard orders.  And Richard cutting us off, because he said he could handle one of us, just not both.

So Richard was in town on business, preparing to go to Iraq, assuring me it was in the no-fly zone.  And we met at Spanish Village.

Richard was raised in Houston & first went to the Village in 1958.  I know this because he told me the story of how his father & mother went with Richard & Marguerite for dinner at the Village.  The waiters waxed poetic over Richard & Marguerite.

Dr. Pulley’s response:  I brought you here in 1958.

This is what happens at the Village.  People share stories.  I spoke of my efforts at a garden.  Richard spoke of gophers, & his frustration at gardening.

Sitting there, sampling the salsa I remembered, talking with Richard, I was happy that the Village is part of my past & my present.

For Richard, it was a taste of home in a city that changes daily.

For me, it was a part of my experience, my history, my story that I refuse to let go.

 As are Richard & Marguerite.

Jaki Jean, Heroics, & Sainthood

The other day my sister said You are my hero.

Months ago my friend Marguerite you are a saint.

I am, of course, neither.   Hero(ine) nor saint.

My friend Shirley says it is a blessing, what you do for your mother Jean.

I agree that it is a blessing & a privilege to have this time with Jean.  But it is a blessing grounded in my sister’s generosity & support & her love for our mother, not in any propensity on my part toward heroics or sainthood.

Last Saturday, my sister & her husband David came over.  David to help my brother Jason hang a door & my sister to hang.  She asked me what I had done that morning.

I washed the dishes.  I replied.

From the look on her face, I do believe that my hero status fell several notches.

I didn’t explain that after the sun woke me, I took care of Jean’s morning toilet.  And I made breakfast:  Fresh orange juice, an omelet with potatoes, scallions & tomatoes, accompanied with a side of sliced avocado.  I made sure Jean took her meds & finished all of her protein drink.  And I fed Eli & let him out for his morning toilet.  I started a load of laundry, folded a completed load resting in the dryer, took a shower & saw to Jean’s post-meal toilet.  And I cut two roses to put in a vase in Jean’s room.

And then I washed the dishes.

Washing the dishes seemed a heroic accomplishment in the midst of Jean’s breakfast, Eli’s breakfast, an omelet for myself (with fresh jalapenos) &  accompanying side but no freshly squeezed orange juice, Jean’s toiletries,  Eli’s morning ritual, the laundry & my shower.  And remembering my own meds.

But then my propensity for heroics & sainthood has been greatly exaggerated.  

But my appreciation of the wonder & joy to be found in accomplishing the minutiae has never been exaggerated. 

Even washing dishes.

In Response to Wearing White Hoods

                                                   

  North Dakota Hockey Fans Dress Like Klan Members For High School Game 

Andres, as promised, I have been thinking about your comment on the above photo, a photo I altered by taking away the color & minimizing the students surrounding the three  who chose to wear garments reminiscent of the KKK.  Because it all comes down to black & white & these three hoods in a mass of white garb. 

You wrote:

When I was in high school, I remember we celebrated International Day and one of my classmates dressed up as Hitler. We were ignorant and naive in 1976 his image was even published in the Yearbook, as if it was something to celebrate. Fast Forward to 2013...no explanation for this one...pathetic.  

Looking back, I am not sure that we can claim ignorance or naiveté as an explanation for behavior or traditions with insidious & insensitive under & overtones. 

We debated the right of eighteen year olds drafted into the military to participate in the process that called them into service, called upon them to give up their lives in that service.  We understood the need for civil rights to be disseminated throughout the population; that the war in Vietnam was not really about defending democracy but annihilating the Other (real & imagined); that our survival as a species is intertwined & linked with the survival of the Environment & its ecosystems. 

We recognized the promise of change & growth beyond culturally imposed gender & racial stereotypes.

Perhaps culture itself engrains ignorance & perpetuates naiveté in our collective consciousness to ensure that we forget the power & passion of our youthful rhetoric. We lose our idealism.  We lose our fire. 

It is beyond understanding that in 2013, the KKK still exists, that the insidious symbol & the ideology behind that all white, hooded cloak, is imitated.  Venerated.  Beyond understanding that the three students in the photo were not aware of the image.

It is beyond understanding that in 2013, a woman’s right to control her body & its reproductive capacity is in jeopardy.  Beyond understanding that women are not guaranteed fair & equitable treatment in the work place, the military, in representation, in the private & the public sectors. 

It is beyond understanding that in 2013, fifty years after Martin Luther King, Jr., stood in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial, that a biracial President elected by a majority of American voters fosters insidious enmity & anger among his detractors.  Because he is not a White Anglo-Saxon male of European descent. 

It is beyond understanding that in 2013, over forty years after Coronado High School in El Paso elected Charlotte Basset as the first female President of Student Council, we have yet to see a woman elected as President of the United States.  Beyond understanding that the nation leading the free world has is the only major democracy never led by a female. 

It is beyond understanding that in 2013, the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act is before the Supreme Court. 

It is beyond understanding that in 2013, a nation built on immigration & the diversity brought by immigration, has forgotten that we are all descended from immigrants.

It is beyond understanding that in 2013, we are more divided than we were when all the answers were blowin' in the wind & Puff was a magic dragon & we dreamed that one day all men & all women would be free & equal & worthy.

My youth was marked by many things – the text of my life was imprinted & influenced by my family, my mother’s faith, my father’s mind, the neighborhoods in which I lived, public education, teachers, writers, musicians & artists, popular culture, history, time, discourse. 

It was not marked by either ignorance or naiveté. Growing up as Jack & Jean’s daughter demanded discourse, knowledge, understanding, awareness. 

As you see, Andres, I have thought about this for many days, & will continue to ponder. 

To ponder why we continue to witness & experience behaviors & beliefs rooted less in ignorance or naiveté than in a willing suspension of understanding & awareness.

Jean, Jaki Jean, the Miraculous & the Mundane

While the NRA attempts to redirect the dialogue about the control of weapons designed for combat as an assault on the Second Amendment & while the Obama Inaugural Committee attempts to create a national celebration representative of the country & the administration & while the performance of a virtuoso playing Beethoven on $3million violin goes unnoticed in a D.C. subway station, I marvel at the mundane

.

Because the miraculous not only coexists with the mundane – the miraculous is found within the very fabric of the mundane.  In the fabric of common, unimaginative actions dictated by the limitations of a temporal existence. 

Faced with the surface of what is common & ordinary, we direct our focus, we contrive celebrations & we ignore the wonder embedded in our everyday existence.

Until we lose the ability to perform those common, unimaginative actions.

Although I have always marveled at the way the human body performs the most mundane of tasks, it was only when I lost the use of my right hand to a TIA that I realized how dependent I was on my mind’s ability to command my hand to grasp or hold or touch or caress or control objects.

And how foolish it is to take the connection between mind & body as a given.

With the zeal of a physical therapist specializing in hands & my own stubborn determination, the connection between my mind & my right hand was restored.  Subtle reminders of the miracle of that connection persist as I age.

And as I spend this time with Jean, I am reminded to direct my focus.  To recognize & celebrate the unexpected virtuoso performance found in ordinary & familiar actions & surroundings.

Last Friday evening, I watched with wonder as Jean held a fork & fed herself dinner for the first time in many, many months

.

An ordinary, unimaginative, mundane act.  And miraculous.

And I am reminded to remain diligent, to take the time to redirect, recognize & celebrate wonders that pass for the mundane.