Had I know how delicious and handy preserved lemons could be, I would have made them years before. But diced up fine and tossed in a salad, diced and mixed with .... anything, like shallots or scallions or tapenade, with a bit of olive oil and spread on a piece of fish or chicken, or tossed in a stir-fry, and on and on. Delicious. Seriously, two ingredients, lemons and salt, and you have something that will last for months and never let you down. Google "preserved lemons" and pick whatever recipe is the simplest, no herbs, nothing but lemons and salt, let them sit a week in a dark place and then in the fridge forever. I didn't use any water, just more lemon juice on top of the salty squished lemons in the jar and it was perfect.
Then we segue to halibut: was in Whole Foods last Friday or Sunday, I can never tell those two days apart, and the fish guy was lining up pieces of fresh halibut that was ON SALE (so it must have been Friday) at a reasonable $12.99 a pound, never frozen, wild in USA, yada, yada. I got a piece about a half pound, which sounds glutinous but wasn't. Too small to build a fire to grill it so I plopped it on a piece of tin foil, drizzled a couple of spoonfuls of white wine on it, tossed about a spoonful of cold butter (cut up) around the edges and on top, some of Trader Joe's Olive Tapenade, which is the best I have ever bought. I mixed a couple of spoonfuls of that with a small bit of diced preserved lemon (see above) and a few red pepper flakes and a tiny bit of olive oil. Didn't seal the foil, just smushed it up around the top and put it in a 450 oven for about 12 minutes with a sheet pan of asparagus and spring onions, all done at the same time. Hello Dead Fish! I could have eaten a pound of it (well, possibly, we will never know) because it was that delicious. Done perfectly, still moist but flaky, not one bit dry (as halibut can get) and rich and unctuous and with the veggies and a glass of dry white wine from the land of the French, it was the perfect dinner. (Insert smiley face here, but no, please don't, just envision a nice smiling face.)
And on to books. I have been reading a lot of books on death lately, don't know why. Well, I could surmise but that's a blog for another day. I read the latest best seller by the doctor who died: "When Breath Becomes Air" by Paul Kalanithi and another one titled "In the Slender Margin" by Eve Joseph. And I read "H is for Hawk" by Helen Macdonald. The first is moving because Kalanithi is young, is a neurosurgeon and is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. He is brilliant and practical and wary and aware, all at the same time. It's worth reading, of course, to know how it feels to know you are pretty much dead toast but still you have hope. It is heart breaking in so many ways. But oddly, I wasn't as moved as I wanted to be. He wrote so well but for me there was a disconnect, which is probably the only way he could write about his death which was waiting for him, teeth bared, in the next room.
"In the Slender Margin" is written by a woman who worked as a hospice counselor. The subtitle of the book is "The Intimate Strangeness of Death and Dying" which is rather appropriate. She writes about rituals around dying from various cultures, how different people deal with death and dying and the history (sort of) of it all. Joseph is a poet, so the book is lyrical in many ways and is a quick read, you can finish it in two or three days. There are passages that are beautiful and passages that give you good insight to how we and others deal with the entire death process.
"H is for Hawk" is about grief, and thus isn't about death directly, but hey, I just finished it so it gets added in here for the monthly book report. I am torn about this book. Great critical acclaim, of course, and the writing is very good but then I have some quibbles. It's essentially the story of a woman dealing with the death of her father and of her subsequently raising and training of a hawk. Not just any hawk but the SuperFly of the Hawk world, a Goshawk. Along the way she delves into the life of T.H.White, a British writer ("The Once and Future King" and others) who also raised a hawk. The book is like one long allegory about grief and letting go and being reborn and retraining oneself to see the world in a new way. For me, there was too much about White and I got tired of her relating her hawk to real people (and she admits she humanized the hawk too much as well) but there are passages that work well and are lovely to read. It seemed a little forced at times, like she needed to add just One More Dramatic Episode of the Hawk Gouging Her and Making Her Bleed. (Yes, I know, I am being petty.) I simply didn't swoon over it as many have. But then, as we all know, I swoon rarely. I am glad I finished it, especially because the last thirty pages were quite good. (Wow, how really lame that sounds, but so it stands.)
But still, I think out of all the books I have read on death and dying and all that, "Being Mortal" grabbed me the most. Maybe because it was the first book of this current genre that I read, maybe because he, Gawande, is clinical in parts and emotional in others, but I have recommended that book to so many people and I will continue to do so.
OK, that's all I have right now, at this moment, on this evening. Now it is time to clutter up the kitchen and make some dinner.
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