The Wind Blows Free

Dear Coots and Cootlings,

States of Being

Schuyler is overseeing my work. He doesn’t miss a thing.

He is celebrating spring with song, after months of quiet. Schuyler was brought to full voice by a performance of Rachmaninoff’s piano transcription of Bach’s Violin Partita No. 3 in E Major. I could not speak on the telephone. “Hey, keep it down!” “No, I won’t, and you can’t make me!”

Outside the sky is firing navy shadows like a T-shirt gun

And spring is on the wind like wifi

from I Knew I Loved You When You Showed Me Your Minecraft World by Hera Lindsay Bird

Here is a resident of Schrȏdinger’s garden in Zurich:

Clockwise

A heavy-set young nerd wearing cargo shorts, thick glasses, and a backpack was walking clockwise around Salesforce Park, holding his iPad directly in front of his face. Most people, over 80% I would guess, walk counter-clockwise around the park.

In Yang Shuang-zi’s odd and exciting new novel Taiwan Travelogue, a soup, Muâ-ínn-thng, is made from young jute leaves. The preparation requires occasional stirring, which must be done only in a clockwise direction. English children are taught to stir their tea clockwise. In cooking, stirring is usually done in only one direction, although if there was any scientific reason for this (such as alignment of proteins, as claimed in one Chinese recipe) that would surely be detailed in Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking. It is not.

Taiwan Travelogue is a remarkable fictional autobiography recounting a young Japanese writer’s year in Taiwan. The “author’s” view of Taiwanese culture is revealed through her exploration of traditional foods, with chapters titled Bah-Sò /Braised Minced Pork, Tang-Kue-Tê/Winter Melon Tea, and Kam-Á-Bit/Fruit and Jelly Ice. “If one thinks about the origins of what one eats, it really feels as though a small dining table holds the multitudes of whole oceans and continents.” Aoyama-san’s year of food travels around Taiwan in 1938 proceed, generally, in an anti-clockwise direction.

Clockwise movement may have developed in ancient times as the movement of the sun from east to west resulted in the shadow of a sundial moving from left to right. Or perhaps a time traveler presented a Seiko watch to a Pharaoh. I can find no link between the Egyptian deity Horus and the word “hour”.

The Cuisine of Spring

Christie said to send an email to her husband, Chef Bruno of Le Parc Bistro Bar. My question was about ingredients for an upcoming Lobster Pithivier. Chef Bruno suggests leeks, potatoes, parsley, and garlic. The pithivier, whatever its final ingredients, will bake in a dome-shaped puff pastry shell, to be served with Caesar Salad, Corn on the Cob, and Garlic Bread.

Dinner will be preceded by oysters from Penobscot Bay. They are hard to open, but worth the effort for their extraordinarily clean, briny flavor. I have opened thousands of oysters, and consider myself a fair schucker. Patrick McMurray is wicked good. He holds the Guinness World Record of 39 oysters shucked in one minute. “Wiggle the knife in like a key in a lock until it doesn’t want to go any more, then turn it like a key in the lock.” In the distilling regions of Scotland, an oyster is sometimes followed by a sip of whisky from the empty shell. Here at Bistro Catherine, an oyster is followed by a sip of Champagne. Then another oyster. Then another sip.

On Thursdays for a few years, after my day’s work at the Building Department, I shucked oysters at Salt House. It was exciting for me to be a small part of the restaurant kitchen staff. My station was next to the pass, where Chef Bob peered closely at each dish, wiping the edges of each plate with a rolled cloth. He would occasionally throw back an imperfect dish while swearing at the cooks. “YES, CHEF”, they would shout in reply. Salt House was an informal bistro-style restaurant, but all food prepared in Chef Bob’s kitchen, including the oysters, was required to meet fine-dining standards.

Upcoming

There is a call for speakers at the upcoming Sommcon conference. I am thinking of presenting “A Coot’s-eye View of Wine”. Coots don’t drink, they savor. They decry storing and saving wines, favor opening and drinking right now with other Coots and would-be Coots. They enjoy red or white wines, sometimes drink rosé, never orange wines. A Master Coot carries a corkscrew and a knife.

Please join me and fellow Coots for lunch at Le Parc Bistrobar on Thursday, April 24 at noon. The Steak Frites is fantastic.

Yes, Chef.

Lazar Kornfield

415-307-6707

laurence@kornfield.org

becalmed.substack.com