The writer working on his spheres in the sodium alginate bath (PHILIP DALES)
ONE Sunday morning, at the supermarket, while I was unloading my cart and arranging my groceries on the conveyor belt at the checkout counter, a 40-something mestiza-looking woman, who just wheeled her cart next to mine, asked me, “Excuse me, do you cook?”
I was rendered mum for a few seconds; I thought that was an intrusive question.
But the woman looked genial, so I smiled at her, took a gander, thoughtfully, at my stuff on the counter, turned to face her, smiled again, and answered, shyly, “Yes, I do.”
I saw a tinge of satisfaction on her face, after, perhaps, knowing her suspicions were correct.
Over the dinging of the scanning machine, we chatted about cooking, and the kind of cuisine that I had been working on in my kitchen. (And to be honest, one of my pet peeves is when people ask me what my specialty dish is. Good thing, though, she didn’t ask me that question.)
We exchanged Facebook accounts before I left the counter.
There’s something telling about what people fill their grocery carts.
I actually enjoy, while queuing, and waiting for my turn at checkout counters, observing what shoppers buy, inferring what their choices reveal about themselves. Actually, there are grocery cashiers, I notice, who share the same habit. One time, I was asked, “Are you shopping for a birthday party, Sir?” I was quick to reply, “No, miss. It’s our week’s worth of consumption at home.”
By home I meant Enrico, my partner, and I, and our three helpers.
Vodka-Cured Wild Trout, Bloody Mary Jelly, Avocado Sorbet and Dill Oil (PHILIP DALES)
During that brief encounter with the woman at the grocery checkout counter, I didn’t realize what gave me away, until I checked, a few days later, what was on my grocery list.
The woman must have noticed the stuff I had in my cart: four kinds of oil (pomace, grapeseed, olive and avocado), tall and slender bottles of sherry and raspberry vinegar; a sizeable cut of Gruyere cheese (half of which I would later use to make Gruyere foam to pair with my egg yolk croquettes) and a kilo of Parmigiano-Reggiano.
Half of the cart had these fresh produce: a globe of kohlrabi, which I’d pair with scallops and buttermilk; fennel bulbs, rosemary, sage, mint leaves, dill, flat-leaf parsley, Japanese cucumber, zucchinis, beets, lemons and limes. I had cartons of quinoa flour and rye flour for my breads, semolina for my pasta, granola, coriander seeds, and black sesame seeds for my black sesame microwave sponge cake.
All of that in one cart, it must have screamed cooking. A lot of cooking. Around this time last year, our sexagenarian kusinera, Manang Lina, left us for good to retire in her hometown in the south.
I was left with no one to prepare my breakfast (Enrico, who is actually a natural in the kitchen, wakes up late, and he can cook his own lunch and our dinner).
Lemoncito and Chili Cold Cocktail
Because I would normally wake up at 4 a.m., I thought I had a couple of hours to work in the kitchen before heading for work. Instead of my usual breakfast fare, I would whip up, every morning, at least two dishes I’d learned from hours and hours of watching cooking shows on TV.
If I had to do something, I would have to do it with flare, and heaps of imagination. I had simpler recipes then: scallops in coconut-basil sauce to go with cauliflower and broccoli with fresh herb butter. The next morning I’d make sautéed been sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, carrot, with sesame oil, for starter; and a good portion of pork tenderloin with pickled beetroot, and cranberry-lemon sauce, as my main dish. Or, I’d pick up a new ingredient, like mustard greens, as a side dish to my parrotfish fillet with lemon butter cream sauce. Breakfast at home has since become a full and profound meal! And thus began a food revolution in my kitchen. When I started cooking, I also started making decisions, on a daily basis, about what I ate. I learned to choose my meals.
It helped refine my palate, as I learned to acquire new and unfamiliar taste, acquaint myself with flavors, ingredients and nature’s produce that I had never known or encountered in my whole life.
