Saucy in Seven

I give Claire Robinson with 5 Ingredient Fix on Food Network a great deal of credit for accentuating many many simplistic options to deliver great flavor to the table in 5 or less ingredients. There are some days that an uncomplicated entry and exit to a meal is desired. Other days call for a long lengthy ingredient list and a multitude of steps to achieve the end result. Much like life, one must balance both scenarios in approaching daily existence. There are occasions where time should just stand still and tick forward ever so slowly. For instance, while a roast cooks slowly in the oven one spends the time sitting ocean side chatting it up with an old friend and reading a great book. By the same token, it's nice to have a few recipes in reserve that provide the opportunity to spend less time in the kitchen and more time sitting around a table reflecting on the day's events with a loved one. Notoriously I allow the moment in front of me to determine what the order of the day is to be. I have a fabulous text Ayurveda: A Life of Balance: The Complete Guide to Ayurvedic Nutrition & Body Types with Recipes that has a plethora of information both food and otherwise, but I've found the section on sauces and dressings to be exemplary. I have prepared a recipe for Cilantro and Coconut Sauce from this cookbook many times over (served with/fish, chicken or shrimp). Roasted pine nuts, cilantro, avocado oil, coconut milk, minced fresh coconut, sea salt and a couple tablespoons of hot water. Seven simple ingredients minced or pureed deliver a huge culinary experience via the aromatic quality that cilantro brings to the kitchen and the creamy goodness that coconut milk delivers to any dish. And when time is really cut short and won't allow preparation: I keep in reserve a jarred product from Stone House 27 that is deliciously lovely with a hint of lime and ginger. (and a web site filled with a healthy assortment of recipes).

Literary Madeleines from Martha

Planning a writers conference in one's back yard is like embracing a large bunch of mint in your hands and taking a deep breath inward to allow your mind to bask in the invigorating essence of bliss. (I bought fresh mint at the farmer's market yesterday just for this purpose). As I read the bios of the individuals possibly slated to attend the event next year I'm in awe of the great number of people who write for a living, edit for a living, and/or represent writing for a living. Actually I do not have to look beyond my back yard to find contemporaries living here in the Lowcountry...there's Margaret Shinn Evans editor at the Lowcountry Weekly, there's Teresa Bruce an author/screenwriter, and then there's Kami Kinard a young adult novelist (not to mention some nationally known authors like Pat Conroy, Cassandra King who enjoy the salt marsh as much as the rest of us). Up until last year writing was simply something I did well and it always was connected to my occupation. Now it is what I must breathe to live a literary life. I found a recipe in a 1988 edition of Martha Stewart's Quick Cook Menu: 52 meals you can make in under an hour to align the literary journey with the kitchen...Coconut Madeleines & Persimmons with Tequila and Mint. (Scroll through the link I've provided to page 221 for the recipe...love it when cookbooks are online for the blog). There's a caption to a photo of this dish in Martha's text indicating that Madeleines have literary glory and cites that they play a memorable role in Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. "But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection." Indeed, life through taste and smell serves to recollect, but it also creates.