From April 2004 through December 2011, I have been posting my adventures in Asian food and film. Seven days a week, 365 days a year, I posted hundreds of recipes, film reviews, and food-related essays. And I can say without hesitation that Chopstick Cinema has been the greatest learning experience of my culinary career. But after nearly eight years {alas} the site owner has decided to shift his focus from blogs to electronic publishing. So this is my last official post to Chopstick Cinema.

To fill the void left by Chopstick Cinema, I will be continuing on my new blog forum:
Crab & Nectar. There will be Food… there will be Music… and Art… and Poetry… and Books… and Film… and… the occasional Epiphany…

Here’s wishing a fond farewell to Chopstick Cinema and to the thousands (if not millions) of readers who have stopped by over the years. Peace and Blessings to all for the New Year and beyond.

Gochisosama…

Five Hours in Heaven (February, 2007)

Through a chain of near-miraculous events, René arranged for the two of us to have dinner at the French Laundry last night.

For those of you who may have been living in the jungles of Borneo, or high atop the lofty slopes of K2, and have not yet heard of it, the French Laundry, by popular consensus, is the world’s best and perhaps most famous restaurant. And to think, it’s right up the road from my front door, in the town of Yountville, resident population 2,900.

All day yesterday, I managed to keep a lid on my anticipatory anxiety, reminding myself that it was ‘just dinner’, not dinner with the Queen or the Dalai Lama, just dinner…at the French Laundry. Yikes! Dinner at the French Laundry!!!

We arrived at 7:30, and much to my delight, standing at the reservation desk to greet us was my old friend Kevin Macway, a former co-worker with whom I spent many a busy Saturday night working side by side at the St. George restaurant in St. Helena, years ago before it became Tra Vigne. It was good to see him, and I immediately felt right at home. He seated us in the main dining room, at a table in the epicenter of the restaurant, front row center for the culinary ballet that was about to unfold.

Kevin started us off with a glass of Pierre Gimonnet champagne to sip while we perused the menu and the wine list. And after a descriptively detailed litany of the nine course pre-fixe tasting menu that awaited us, we turned our attention toward the wine list, which features an impressive array of both local and international labels, with a wide selection of half-bottles to complement the variety of dishes on the tasting menu. To accompany the lighter, early courses, we chose a half-bottle of Tantara ‘Bien Nacido’ Pinot Blanc, and to accompany the main dish meats, a half-bottle of Sinnean ‘Resonance’ Pinot Noir from Willamette Valley. And not to get ahead of myself here, but both proved to be excellent choices, not only for our mutual taste in wines, but also as fitting choices for the menu du jour.

One of the trademarks of a meal at the French Laundry is the unexpected appearance of ‘amuse bouche’, tiny tastes of things not mentioned on the menu. Gifts from the chef. And without further ado, the procession of edible treasures began:

First came a pair of Gougeres, no bigger than an olive or a bing cherry, filled with Gruyere cheese. An ethereal harbinger of the thousand pleasures to come.

Next: Cornets of Scottish Salmon Tartare in a Black Sesame Tuille with Red Onion Crème Fraiche. And when I inquired whether the onions in the crème fraiche were raw, as I am allergic to raw onions (they put me right to sleep), at no protest or insistence on my part, in less than two minutes, the waiter reappeared at our table with another one, this time with plain crème fraiche, no onions. This level of service continued throughout the meal, with plates and utensils discreetly appearing and vanishing without intrusion, stray crumbs whisked away, glasses refilled. And when René excused himself from the table, in a twinkle, his rumpled napkin disappeared, with a freshly folded one awaiting him when he returned.

And now, back to the food.

Next came another ‘amuse bouche’, an egg shell, filled with White Truffle Custard finished with Ragout of Black Perigord Truffles, garnished with a translucent-thin sliver of russet potato, inlaid with a single chive.

And then an attentive young woman came around with a basket of brioche, served with two types of hand-churned butter: a salted butter from Vermont, and a sweet butter from Petaluma. Who knew butter could be so unique in texture and flavor?

And now, on to the main menu. With the three ‘amuse bouche’ we’d already been served, I hesitate to call this dish an appetizer, so perhaps the term ‘first course’ would be more appropriate. ‘Oysters and Pearls’ – Sabayon of Pearl Tapioca with Beau Soleil Oysters and White Sturgeon Caviar.

Second course: For me, Salad of Grilled Bluefoot Mushrooms, Compressed Hosui Pears, Celery Branch and Hazelnut Emulsion. For René, Moulard Duck Foie Gras en Terrine, Salade de Pomme de Terre, Confit de Langue de Canard, Laitue Frisee, Cornichons et Moutarde.

Third course: For me: Tartare of Japanese Hamachi, Fennel Bulb, Nicoise Olives, Piquillo Peppers, and Winter Citrus Vierge. For René, Sautéed Fillet of Atlantic Halibut, Wilted Bok Choy, Glazed Tokyo Turnips and Preserved Kumquat Butter.

Fourth course: Main Lobster Tail Cuite Sous Vide, Belgian Endive, Field Rhubarb Confite, Watercress Leaves and Sauce Paloise.

Fifth course: Sirloin of Devil’s Gulch Ranch Rabbit, wrapped in Applewood Smoked Bacon with Ragout of Mayflower Beans, Arrowleaf Spinach and Black Truffles.

Sixth course: For me, Filet Mignon of Marcho Farms Nature Fed Veal, Sweetbread Pierogi, Baby Red Beets, Caramelized Savoy Cabbage and Toasted Caraway Crème Fraiche. For René, Herb-Roasted Sirloin of Australian Wagyu Beef, Crispy Broccolini, Pearl Barley, Green Garlic and Vinaigrette Bordelaise.

Seventh course: Brillat Savarin cheese, Muscovado Sugar-Glazed Pecans, Cipollini Onions and Arugula.

Eighth course: Fuji Apple Sorbet, Gateau au Gingembre and Tahitian Vanilla-Scented Apple Puree.

Ninth course: Pavé de Chocolat Blanc au Thè Vert, Pistachio Pain de Genes, Passion Fruit Jelly and Bitter Chocolate Sauce.

And as if that weren’t enough to send us into the stratosphere, interspersed with the apres dinner treats were several more ‘amuse bouche’: Meyer Lemon Custard, a tiny Crème Brûlée, Espresso Mousse with Cinnamon Sugar Beignets, Sugar-dipped Macadamia Nuts, and an assortment of truffles.

And as if THAT weren’t enough, we were sent home with two packages of shortbread cookies tied with a navy-blue French Laundry ribbon.

I may never eat again…

More Musings on the French Laundry (February, 2007)

Yesterday morning, after my gastronomic orgy at the French Laundry, I was more focused on recording every detail the evening’s events and describing the menu than waxing poetic or analyzing the experience. But now that my feet have returned to terra firma, I have some thoughts on the subject…

In the almost three years that I’ve been creating menus for Chopstick Cinema, and the years before that, when I dabbled in gourmet cooking on a fairly regular basis, and years before that, when I was a front-row spectator as a waiter in the kitchen of the St. George restaurant, and years of watching the Food Network, I’ve managed to piece together a pretty good culinary education. But Thursday evening at the French Laundry, I realized early on that I was WAY out of my league. I felt like a Danish peasant at Babette’s Feast. Although I had a pretty good idea of what I was eating, the names of many of the components and sauces were unfamiliar, and my pedestrian palate was utterly unprepared for the whirlwind of tastes, textures and aesthetics that were laid before me that evening.

More than anything, the experience raised in my mind the philosophical question of quality. Wherein lies the secret of the ‘fine-ness’ I experienced at the French Laundry on Thursday evening. Although I strive for it with each and every dish I prepare, I had to wonder what magic renders transcendent the bewildering array of delicacies served each evening at the French Laundry, while mine, no matter how artfully prepared, still hover somewhere around the level of yummy, tasty, delicious, and occasionally Wow! But never transcendent.

Of course, that is a rhetorical question, as I already know the answer to it. The transcendence of French Laundry cuisine is a gestalt of ingredients, expertise, ambiance, attention to detail, and, dare I say it?…Cachet. Had I been served similar or comparable dishes at, say, Domaine Chandon, or even Bouchon (Thomas Keller’s ‘other place’), both of which are just up the road from the French Laundry, and both of which are places I’ve had the exquisite pleasure of dining, would I have been as impressed, mesmerized even, as I was by the meal I experienced at the French Laundry? The answer, I think…is No.

The French Laundry is the French Laundry because it’s the French Laundry… It’s a rapturous riddle wrapped in a magnificent mystery inside an epicurean enigma…

On the illuminating site Food Blog S’cool, Sam of Becks & Posh has created a venue wherein Kevin over at Seriously Good has dared all us foodbloggers to show you our kitchens.

So…Welcome to my little kitchen…

The image in the photo above is the noren hanging in my kitchen doorway. Noren are a Japanese tradition and may be seen hanging in the doorways of both home kitchens and restaurants. The image on my noren is the Takarabune, a legendary Japanese treasure boat bearing the Shichifuku-jin, the Seven Gods of Good Fortune: Daikokuten, variously regarded as the guardian of monasteries, the kitchen god, and god of the harvest; Ebisu, the god of fishermen in Japanese mythology; Bishamonten, the Japanese god of war, regarded as one of the four Buddhist gods of the horizons and protector of the north; Fukurokuju, the Japanese god of wealth; Juronin, the Japanese god of longevity; Hotei, the god of happiness and contentment; and Benzaiten, goddess of music, eloquence and wisdom. The Takarabune bearing the Shichifuku-jin is believed to sail on New Year’s Day, and the tradition is to place a picture of the Takarabune under one’s pillow to ensure that the year’s first dream will bring good fortune.

And speaking of good fortune…I just recently moved into this lovely apartment in downtown Napa. It borders a wooded ravine with a tributary of the Napa River running right under my balcony, and my kitchen window looks right at it. The ‘lucky bamboo’ on the table is a [thankfully still thriving] gift from my friend Alice Jackson.

My little kitchen is a walk-through efficiency that opens into the foyer on one end, and into a dining area on the other. The passageway between the two parallel countertops is only 36″wide. My grandmother, bless her soul, would have called mine a ‘one-butt kitchen’. The up-side is that no matter where I’m standing, whatever I need to lay my hands on is within arm’s reach. The downside…my tush is tattooed with bruises from bumping into the sharp edges of the oven door handle.

I have all the cupboards organized according to where their contents are most often used. The pots and pans are on either side of the stove, as are all the storage containers and food wrap. Dishes and glassware are right over the dishwasher for efficiency in putting them away [my son Will's job, so he's thankful for that].

I store my Asian tableware in baskets. That way, when time comes to plate up and take pictures, I can haul them all out at once and choose those that best accentuate the aesthetics of the dish.

At the far end of my kitchen, at the end of the walk-through, I have placed a tall set of shelves that I call ‘my pantry’. There I store canned and dry goods, and my cat Mochi eats her meals from a little tray right in front of it. My laundry is right next to it. The washer rolls up to my kitchen sink, and the 110v dryer works on regular household current. Pretty nifty, eh? And on the other side is a little breakfast table that also serves as an extension of my countertop when things really get cookin’.

Above the washer is my spice rack. Nothing fancy, just something I hammered together one afternoon. But I’ve sure made some tasty food with the contents of those hand-labeled jars.

The most frequently visited shelf in my kitchen is the one at eye level in my ‘pantry’. There I store everyday chopsticks, the basics like soy sauce [oops, looks like I'd better put that on my shopping list], salt & pepper, tabasco, basil, toothpicks and a fire extinguisher that, thankfully, I have never had to use.

My favorite part of the kitchen is the artwork. Across from the entryway is a very large closet that houses, among a miscellany of other things, Mochi’s catbox [well...where else was I going to put the dang thing?]. So for her convenience, I leave one of the sliding doors open, and camouflage it with a set of hanging bamboo curtains bearing an image of Hokusai’s classic ukiyo-e woodblock print ‘Beneath the Waves off Kanagawa’ from the series ’36 Views of Mt. Fuji’.

Hanging over my kitchen sink is a series of seasonal photographs taken many years ago by my dear friend Mark Peterson, a professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin West Bend. I’ve never had a kitchen with a window over the sink, so that’s where those photographs always hang. And just for the record, this is my kitchen sink on one of its better days. Even with a dishwasher just a few inches away, I still have a hard time keeping it emptied of all the dishes that accumulate over the course of each day.

And right next to the kitchen doorway is one of my very favorite pieces of art in all the world. It’s an original silk screen print created in 1973 by my elder brother R. Steven Heiter, birdwatcher and artist extraordinaire. It’s titled ‘Up the Country’. And no matter where I go or how foreign the kitchen may feel, once I hang that on the wall, I’m home.

Mine is a humble kitchen. I don’t have a lot of fancy gadgets, shiny pots & pans or sleek knives. The most treasured things in my kitchen are the well-worn ones that bear the scars of a thousand memorable meals. And as I told my friend Guy over at Meathenge, they say that the best things come in small packages, so perhaps the best food comes from tiny kitchens.

En Mi Cocina… (May, 2006)

My son Will is studying Spanish II in high school and was recently assigned to write a paragraph about our kitchen. Here’s what he wrote…

En mi cocina

En mi casa, no hay una cocina grande. Hay una cocino poquito. Siempre hay muchas frutas y legumbres exóticos. Mi madre prepara muchas tipos de comidas de Asia. Mi madre algunos asar mucho pollo y papas, pero casi nunca freir los comidas. Es una cocina moderna. Nos estufa tiene hornillos eléctricos. No nos gustan los hornillos eléctricos.

Precious don’t you think?

The Changing Face of My Spice Rack (October, 2004)

Last week, before my Taiwanese Dinner & a Movie, I gave my kitchen a very thorough cleaning, which included wiping all the jars in my spice rack. I couldn’t help noticing how it has changed over the past few months as I have added new spices for each Asian cuisine. Where I used to stock only salt, pepper, garlic powder, basil, cumin, paprika, bay leaves, cinnamon, nutmeg, a generic curry powder, cayenne pepper, Chinese mustard and powdered ginger, I have now added such exotica as garam masala, sumac, cardamom, turmeric, coriander, Chinese five-spice powder, whole cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon sticks. And with trying a new Asian cuisine every month, I don’t know that I will ever go back and use them all up, however many Asian cuisines have spices and other ingredients in common, so my array of exotic new spices may do double duty in many meals yet to come.

Food Blogger Versus the Grain Moths (March, 2007)

I have a dirty little secret. One that I can finally confess, now that the ordeal is over.

For weeks, I have been battling an infestation of grain moths in my kitchen. For those of you who have never had the experience, grain moths, aka Indian Meal Moths (Plodia interpunctella), are among the most insidious and destructive little pests on the planet. Oh, they may look harmless enough, as they flutter about on dusty wings like so many kitchen faeries. But don’t be fooled, they will worm their way into every cereal, grain, meal, flour, noodle, chip, and cookie in your pantry. They even get into paper products, tea bags, and believe it or not…powdered wasabi! They can get into tightly sealed jars, heavy plastic bags, and unopened boxes lined with airtight envelopes. No form of packaging, no matter how invincible, can stop these relentless creatures.

They infiltrate your kitchen by hitching a ride as larvae, somewhere among your groceries, in some seemingly innocent bag of granola, cornmeal, or ramen. And before you know it, they’re everywhere. At first, all you may notice is one or two, hovering about your kitchen. Next, you might notice them in tiny swarms, taking flight as you disturb the air in your kitchen when you get up in the morning to make breakfast.

But by then, it’s too late. Although you may not see them yet, they’re already everywhere. Canoodling in your kashi, romancing in your rice, cocooning in your cornmeal, nesting in your Nabiscos, and hatching in your hibiscus tea. They multiply like mice on Viagra, and I swear the little buggers must be born pregnant, although they can be seen doing the wild thing on your kitchen walls and countertops during their brief mating season.

You can also recognize their presence by the microscopic holes in the packaging of your carbohydrate products, and the dainty little webs they weave once they’re inside. The good news is: they’re mostly harmless. They don’t bite or sting, they’re relatively easy to catch and kill, and their life cycle is very short. The bad news is: you’re gonna have to GET RID of every box, bag, jar, and cannister of carbohydrates in your kitchen, and possibly all your tea bags and paper products too. And don’t forget to check your dry pet foods.

Once that’s done, and you’ve replaced all your carbohydrate products (flour, cereal, crackers, cookies, noodles, etc.), you’re going to have to store them in the refrigerator or freezer until you’re certain that you’re rid of all the undiscovered progeny they left behind. In other words, once you suddenly notice that you haven’t seen a single grain moth or any sign of them for weeks. After that, whether you choose to store your carbs in your cupboards and pantry is up to you. But do so at the peril of reinfestation the next time you bring home a box of that bargain granola or a bag of exotic flour from the Asian or Mexican market.

Pesticides are not recommended for treatment of grain moths, however, one highly effective weapon is an ordinary strip of fly paper, the kind that comes in spiral rolls and can be thumbtacked to your kitchen ceiling. You will be amazed at how quickly it fills up with the little devils.

And one last word to the wise: DON’T LIVE IN DENIAL. If you see even a single grain moth, as heartbreaking and inconvenient as it may be, go through your pantry, look for signs of them in your carbohydrate products and get rid of anything that shows any sign of them. And if you begin to see more than just a few, bite the bullet and get rid of all your carbs immediately, before Plodia interpunctella takes over your kitchen and your life.

Every food lover has a favorite food book or two, and I’m no exception. While many wax poetic over Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, or the works of MFK Fisher, mine are a little off the trodden path. And in my years of posting blogs to Chopstick Cinema, I have mentioned them all at one time or another. Here are my weblog posts, arranged in chronological order of their appearance my life, from early childhood to just a couple of summers ago.

The Duchess Bakes a Cake (November, 2004)

Writing this weblog every day has given me cause to think back over the role that food and cooking have played throughout my life. I used to think that my love of both stemmed from my Mom being such a good cook, and all those years I spent working in the restaurant business. But upon reflection, as more and more ancient memories are stirred by my daily musings, I’ve come to believe it runs much deeper than that. It’s in my blood and my bones, and maybe even in my DNA somehow. In recent days, I’ve recalled memories of making mud pies in the back yard after a summer rain; of hosting tea parties for my best friend Jane and cousin Janet, replete with a beautiful porcelain tea set, on the back porch of the house where I grew up in Mobile; and of my very favorite children’s book, The Duchess Bakes a Cake.

In limerick-style rhyme, The Duchess Bakes a Cake tells the story of a bored duchess, who one day whimsically decides to bake “a lovely light luscious delectable cake.” But things go awry when the duchess discovers that she has put in too much yeast and the cake overflows the pan… and the oven… and the kitchen, with the duchess frantically bouncing atop the rising dough, trying to squash it back down. Despite her best efforts, the cake rises all the way up to the clouds, and when all attempts fail by the king and his men to bring it down with catapults and arrows, it appears the duchess is stranded, until her little daughter Gunhilde cries out that she’s hungry. All’s well that ends well, as the cake is devoured by everyone in the kingdom, and the duchess is brought back fat and happy to terra firma.

Written and Illustrated by Virginia Kahl, this now-classic children’s book was published the year before I was born, so it was still quite new by the time I became captivated by it. Over the years, I must have checked that book out of the library a hundred times, and by the time I’d outgrown it, I knew every word of it by heart. Oddly enough however, I’d never owned a copy of it until last year, when I discovered that it was still in print and available on Amazon.com. And even after all these years, just the thought of it brings a smile to my face, and an abiding sense of sweet nostalgia to my heart.

Where It All Began (December, 2005)

Yesterday morning, I went to the Friends of the Library Sale at the Napa Public Library. Several times a year, the Friends of the Library fills the huge multi-purpose room with thousands of donated books, which they sell for bargain basement prices, and the proceeds go to library funding. Friday was half-price day, and on the weekends, you can fill a grocery bag with books for only $3.

For a gal with more than a thousand books in her personal library, the Friends of the Library Sale is always a dilemma…Do I really NEED any more books? Or OMG, look at all these fantastic books that I positively CAN’T live without! The answer is always the same…MORE BOOKS!

The Cookbook and Travel sections are always my first stop, where I scoop armloads without regard to how much space I have left on my bookshelves at home. Not to worry, I can always make room for MORE BOOKS!

Yesterday’s finds some real beauties. Two guides to ethnic ingredients, a big fat collection of recipes called The Complete Chinese and Asian Cookbook, and best of all, a hard-bound copy of The Creative Cooking Course by Charlotte Turgeon in mint condition with the dust jacket intact.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. Out of the hundreds of cookbooks on display, it practically leapt off the shelf at me. You see, The Creative Cooking Course is an old familiar favorite from many years ago, and from its 1200 recipes and 2500 photographs I prepared my first gourmet dishes. I can still taste the Cauliflower with Mornay Sauce and the Quiche Lorraine…

Much to my misfortune, more than 20 years ago, I lost a custody battle over that cookbook with an ex who shared my esteem for it and took it with him when we parted ways. I suppose I could have replaced it at some point over the years, but the Internet didn’t exist for many of them, and tracking down books wasn’t nearly as easy as it is on Amazon.com. And eventually, I guess I just forgot all about The Creative Cooking Course…until yesterday when I found an old friend at the Friends of the Library Sale.

Kitchen, by Banana Yoshimoto (August, 2006)

“The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it’s a kitchen, if it’s a place where they make food, it’s fine with me.”

So begins Kitchen, award-winning author Banana Yoshimoto’s culinary love story. The chef du cuisine et amour is Mikage Sakurai, a fetching young Japanese woman, barely more than a girl really, who suddenly finds herself all alone in the world after the death of her grandmother, the last of her remaining relatives. Mikage is soon befriended by Yuichi Tanabe, a college classmate who knew her grandmother as a customer at the flower shop where he works part time after school. Concerned that Mikage may be depressed and in need of a surrogate family, Yuichi and Eriko, his transsexual father-turned-mother, take her in until she can find a place of her own.

Still bereaved by her grandmother’s death, Mikage is emotionally and academically adrift, finding what little comfort and distraction she can in the kitchen. While preparing meals for Yuichi and Eriko as a means of justifying her existence and reciprocating for their generosity, she soon discovers that, not only is cooking a therapeutic and nourishing pastime, but that it has truly become her raison d’etre. Mikage nevertheless continues to grapple with repressed grief and existential angst, until an unexpected turn of events sets her heart on the path to love.

Though brief, at only a little over a hundred pages, Kitchen, is a literary truffle composed of many subtle and delicate ingredients. Its light outer layer is a casual, straight-forward narrative, dusted with a sprinkle of self-deprecating humor. Yet at its core lies a delectable morsel of heartfelt pathos and insight into the depths of the human soul.

In Kitchen’s finest passage, in a quiet moment of reflection, Mikage muses to herself:

“Lying there on my back, I looked up at the roof of the inn and, staring at the glowing moon and clouds, I thought, really, we’re all in the same position (It occurred to me that I had often thought that in similar situations. I would like to be known as an action philosopher.)

We all believe we can choose our own path from among the many alternatives. But perhaps it’s more accurate to say that we make the choice unconsciously. I think I did–but now I knew it, because now I was able to put it into words. But I don’t mean this in the fatalistic sense; we’re constantly making choices. With the breaths we take every day, with the expression in our eyes, with the daily actions we do over and over, we decide as though by instinct. And so some of us will inevitably find ourselves rolling around in a puddle on some roof in a strange place with a takeout katsudon in the middle of winter, looking up at the night sky as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Ah, but the moon was lovely.”

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury (In Grandmother’s Kitchen) (January, 2005)

One of my favorite works of literature is Ray Bradbury’s magical coming-of-age story, Dandelion Wine. First published in 1957, the story focuses on the life of a boy named Douglas Spaulding in the summer of 1928 in Green Town, Illinois. His world is filled with a cast of lively characters, including his younger brother Tom, his parents and grandparents, a pair of spinster sisters named Miss Fern and Miss Roberta who have a misadventure with a car nicknamed ‘The Green Machine’, a pipe-dreaming inventor named Mr. Jonas, and a dreadful phantom known only as ‘The Lonely One’ who lurks in the ravine.

Why, you may ask, would I mention Dandelion Wine in a weblog on Asian food and film? Well…my favorite chapter is the one that describes his Grandmother’s kitchen. Having recently deconstructed my own kitchen for the move to our new home, amid the process of restoring order once again, I am fondly reminded of many passages from that chapter of Dandelion Wine.

In the first few paragraphs, Douglas muses, “Grandma, he had often wanted to say, Is this where the world began? For surely it had begun in no other than a place like this. The kitchen, without doubt, was the center of creation, all things revolved about it; it was the pediment that sustained the temple.”

But pediment to the temple though it be, Grandmother’s kitchen is the epitome of chaos. Her failing eyesight is dubiously enhanced by a badly chipped and smudged pair of spectacles, and what’s more, Grandmother never uses a cookbook.

“In all the years not one single dish resembled another. Was this one from the deep green sea? Had that one been shot from blue summer air? Was it a swimming food or a flying food, had it pumped blood or chlorophyll, had it walked or leaned after the sun? No one knew. No one asked. No one cared.

…The food was self-explanatory, wasn’t it? It was its own philosophy, it asked and answered its own questions. Wasn’t it enough that your blood and your body asked no more than this moment of ritual and rare incense?”

Each evening, Grandmother laid a out a sumptuous banquet for the Spaulding family, a half-dozen boarders who rented the rooms upstairs, and Aunt Rose, who had come for an extended visit.

“Trailing veils of steam, Grandma came and went and came again with covered dishes from kitchen to table while the assembled company waited in silence. No one lifted the lids to peer in at the hidden victuals. At last Grandma sat down. Grandpa said grace, and immediately thereafter the silverware flew up like a plague of locusts on the air. When everyone’s mouths were absolutely crammed full of miracles, Grandmother sat back and said, ‘Well, how do you like it?’

And the relatives, including Aunt Rose, and the boarders, their teeth deliciously mortared together at this moment, faced a terrible dilemma. Speak and break the spell, or continue allowing this honey-syrup food of the gods to dissolve and melt away to glory in their mouths? They looked as if they might sit there forever, untouched by fire or earthquake, a shooting in the street, a massacre of innocents in the yard, overwhelmed with effluviums and promises of immortality. All villains were innocent in this moment of tender herbs, sweet celeries, luscious roots. The eye sped over a snow field where lay fricassees, salmagundis, gumbos, freshly invented succotashes, chowders, ragouts. The only sound was a primeval bubbling from the kitchen and the clocklike chiming of fork-on-plate announcing the seconds instead of the hours.”

One afternoon, Aunt Rose made the well-meaning mistake of suggesting that she help Grandmother clean and organize her kitchen.

“Grandma,” said Aunt Rose, down again. “Oh what a kitchen you keep. It’s really a mess, now, you must admit. Bottles and dishes and boxes all over, the labels off most everything, so how do you tell what you’re using? I’d feel guilty if you didn’t let me help you set things to rights while I’m visiting here. Let me roll up my sleeves.”

Aunt Rose would not be denied, and before it was all over, the kitchen had been overhauled and organized from top to bottom, including a larder of fresh groceries, new glasses and a hairdo for Grandmother, and…much to her horror…a cookbook! But despite Aunt Rose’s best intentions, suppertime that evening was a joyless occasion.

“Smiling people stopped smiling. Douglas chewed one bit of food for three minutes, and then, pretending to wipe his mouth, lumped it in his napkin. He saw Tom and Dad do the same. People swashed the food together, making roads and patterns, drawing pictures in the gravy, forming castles of the potatoes, secretly passing meat chunks to the dog. Grandfather excused himself early. ‘I’m full,’ he said.”

The following afternoon, Grandfather took up a collection from the boarders to buy a train ticket for Aunt Rose, and had Douglas distract her while they packed her bags. When they returned to find Aunt Rose’s luggage on the steps of the front porch, Grandfather announced, ‘Rose,’ ‘I have something to say to you…Goodbye.’

That evening, with Aunt Rose out of the picture, Douglas crept downstairs at midnight and restored Grandmother’s kitchen to its original state of chaos.

“He took the baking powder out of its fine new tin and put it in an old flour sack the way it had always been. He dusted the white flour into an old cookie crock. He removed the sugar from the metal bin marked sugar and sifted it into a familiar series of smaller bins marked spices, cutlery, string. He put the cloves where they had lain for years, littering the bottom of a half a dozen drawers. He brought the dishes and the knives and forks and spoons back out on top of the tables.

He found Grandma’s new eyeglasses on the parlor mantel and hid them in the cellar. He kindled a great fire in the old wood-burning stove, using pages from the new cookbook. By one o’clock in the still morning a huge husking roar shit up in the black stovepipe, such a wild roar that the house, if it had ever slept at all, awoke. He heard the rustle of Grandma’s slippers down the hall stairs. She stood in the kitchen, blinking at the chaos. Douglas was hidden behind the pantry door.

At one-thirty in the deep dark summer morning, the cooking odors blew up through the windy corridors of the house. Down the stairs, one by one, came women in curlers, men in bathrobes, to tiptoe and peer into the kitchen — lit only by fitful gusts of red fire from the hissing stove. And there in the black kitchen at two of a warm summer morning, Grandma floated like an apparition, amidst bangings and clatterings, half blind once more, her fingers groping instinctively in the dimness, shaking out spice clouds over bubbling pots and simmering kettles, her face in the firelight red, magical, and enchanted as she seized and stirred and poured the sublime foods.

Quiet, quiet, the boarders laid the best linens and gleaming silver and lit candles rather than switch on electric lights and snap the spell. Grandfather, arriving home from a late evening’s work at the printing office, was startled to hear grace being said in the candlelit dining room.

As for the food? The meats were deviled, the sauces curried, the greens mounded with sweet butter, the biscuits splashed with jeweled honey; everything toothsome, luscious, and so miraculously refreshing that a gentle lowing broke out as from a pasturage of beasts gone wild in clover. One and all cried out their gratitude for their loose-fitting night clothes.”

Of course, by the time I prepare my ‘Seven Years in Tibet’ dinner, I hope to have achieved a somewhat more orderly arrangement than Grandma Spaulding’s in my new kitchen, which is still a work in progress. But even in the most orderly kitchen, I will still subscribe to her philosophy of food, asking no more than this moment of ritual and rare incense.

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain (July, 2006)

These last two weeks have been a kind of stay-at-home vacation for me, in which I attended to a few household and personal projects, hung out with my son Will on his summer vacation, and actually sat down and read a book for pleasure: Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential.

It had been on my reading list for several years, and once bought had been sitting on my shelf for several months. I rarely read for pure pleasure anymore. I read headlines and news, I read food blogs, I read cookbooks, I read reference books, and I read books that I review for ThingsAsian. So while I had this idle time, I decided to indulge myself. And I must say it was well worth the wait.

It’s good to know that while Tony Bourdain was following his bliss as a chef, he didn’t miss his calling as a writer. It’s obvious he has a gift for both. I spent two scorching summer days in his world, a world so vivid that when I’d finished the last page and retired Kitchen Confidential to my library, I felt I’d actually been on a trip with Tony Bourdain and had returned home to the Napa Valley with a head full of shared and cherished memories.

In his epilogue, Bourdain says, “And the events described are somehow diminished in the telling. A perfect bowl of bouillabaisse, that first, all-important oyster, plucked from the Bassin d’Arcachon, both are made cheaper, less distinct in my memory, once I’ve written about them.”

And to that, all I can say is, “Au contraire, Chef Bourdain, au contraire.”

Amal

Amal is the happiest rickshaw driver in Delhi. Not because life is going especially well for him, but because he remains true to himself no matter what life brings. When a mischievous moppet snatches the purse of Amal’s best customer, he gives chase on foot, only to discover around the next corner that the child has been hit by a Rolls Royce that simply drives away leaving her for dead in the street. Wracked with guilt, Amal, takes her to the hospital and sees to it that she gets the best care. But the best care costs money.

In the competitive world of rickshaw drivers, Amal is fortunate to have a few regular passengers on his daily route, but throughout the rest of the day, he ferries strangers around the bustling city in his tiny green and yellow taxi. Little does he know what the fates have in store for him when an ornery old man gets into his taxi one day. In a dispute over the fare, Amal gives him a discount and refuses to accept a tip. A few months later, everyone who knew the old man is suddenly searching for Amal.

Co-written and directed by Richie Mehta, Amal is a gem of a film that really delivers. Featuring stellar performances by Rupinder Nagra, Koel Purie, Naseeruddin Shah, Seema Biswas, Vik Sahay, Roshan Seth, and Tanisha Chatterjee, the story moves along at the speedy pace of Amal’s little rickshaw, with dramatic irony at its best, and an air of mystery and suspense that unfolds at every turn.

The Civilization of Maxwell Bright

Meet Maxwell Bright: a successful home theater and big-screen TV dealer, fully frontally nude in the driveway outside his Los Angeles home as he chases after his also-naked girlfriend, hurling at her the most obscene, hair-raising, sexually derogatory insults ever captured on film. It seems that they’ve had yet another lovers’ spat while engaged in sexual intercourse and, in the heat of the moment, have gone public with their little melodrama. A shovel upside his head gets his girlfriend hauled off in a squad car and leaves Maxwell Bright with a gaping wound, both literally and figuratively: He’s through with American women.

While sitting around the poker table with his buddies a few days later, the notion of an Asian mail-order bride is introduced, and faster than you can say ‘Eights over Aces’, Maxwell Bright is off to the bride broker. But not just any bride broker. Mr. Wroth, a man of aristocratic refinement and infinitely discriminating taste, prides himself on hand-selecting a perfect match for each of his clients. Six weeks and a hundred thousand dollars later, Maxwell Bright answers a knock at his door to find Mai Ling, his beautiful Chinese wife-to-be.

Life is paradise for the first few days as Mai Ling satisfies his every sexual fantasy, waits on him hand and foot, and brings serenity and order to the once chaotic squalor of Maxwell Bright’s bachelorhood. Paradise, that is, until Max, in a moment of swaggering indiscretion, orders Mai Ling to disrobe for his poker buddies. When she refuses, Max does the deed himself, humiliating his new bride in front of three gaping men, who are just as embarrassed as she is. In that instant, the honeymoon is over, and the following day, Mai Ling hauls Maxwell Bright back to the broker to air her grievances. In this pivotal scene, a secret is revealed about Mai Ling that will profoundly impact the life, and ultimately the death, of Maxwell Bright.

Patrick Warburton stars in the title role of this small-budget independent film, with a finely-crafted script and stellar performances by such familiar faces as Marie Matiko as Mai Ling, Simon Callow as Mr. Wroth, Eric Roberts as best friend Arliss, and cameos by Carol Kane, Nora Dunn, John Glover, and Jennifer Tilley. With a CV that lists only a handful of films, writer and director David Beaird really pushed the margins on this one to win awards at film festivals all over the world. Be forewarned that much of Act I contains abhorrent male chauvinism, and profanity so vulgar that will leave you gaping in dismay, but if you can ride it out, the film takes an unexpected turn in Act II, and concludes in a spiritual and loving way that will make it all worthwhile.

Firefly Dreams

With its debut in Nagoya Japan under the title Ichiban Utsukushii Natsu (The Most Wonderful Summer), and now making its way around the international film festival circuit, Firefly Dreams has set the world of independent filmmaking abuzz. Not only because it stands on its own as a stellar cinematic work, but also because its creator, Welsh-born filmmaker John Williams has succeeded in going where no filmmaker has gone before: Beyond the international frontier and deep into the exclusive world of Japanese cinema.

For Williams, the call to filmmaking came early, at age 14, while watching Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, Wrath of God in a series of foreign films televised by Britain’s BBC2 . From that moment on, it was never a matter of if, but when. Williams made his very first film that same year, and, with ten prior works under his belt, including a 50-minute documentary on the political killings in Sri Lanka, and a 70-minute Japanese film called Midnight Spin, he went on to write, seek financing, scout locations, cast, direct, edit and personally promote Firefly Dreams.

This engaging film tells the simple tale of Naomi, a misguided Japanese teenager who routinely ditches school for shopping and goes nightclubbing with friends to escape her troubled home life. When Naomi’s adulterous mother runs off to live with her lover, Naomi’s father packs her off to the mountain resort town of Horaicho, where his sister runs a small country inn. There, Naomi is reacquainted with the elderly Mrs. Koide, who was once her nanny and who now suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. Naomi is assigned to the task of being Mrs. Koide’s companion and caretaker, and over the course of the summer, a rare friendship that transcends both age and time blossoms between them.

The characters in the story are loosely based upon people from Williams’ own life, and the cast was mindfully chosen from among the hundreds of actors who auditioned for the film. The casting of three newcomers for the youthful characters in Firefly Dreams was a keen instinct for John Williams. In the role of Naomi, Maho Ukai steals every scene with her slangy cityspeak and pouty disposition. Etsuko Kimata is convincing as Naomi’s developmentally disabled cousin Yumi, and Tsutomu Niwa, as Masaru the smooth-talking loverboy, delivers a candidly unaffected performance. The exception to the neophyte cast is one of the granddames of Japanese stage, cinema, and television, Yoshie Minami, who brings a quiet dignity and grace to the role of the aging Mrs. Koide as she slips further and further into her darkling world of nostalgic dementia.

All is implicit in Firefly Dreams, with its many-layered subtleties and refreshing lack of melodrama. But according to Williams, who first wrote the screenplay in English, his original dialogue underwent many changes as it was professionally translated into Japanese, and later fine-tuned by the actors themselves. Firefly Dreams is not so much a film about what happens to the characters, but more importantly the transformations that take place within their emerging and evolving relationships.

Like the unfolding of a lotus blossom, Mrs. Koide’s mysterious past is revealed. Petal by petal, Naomi learns that Mrs. Koide was once a beautiful young war widow who turned to the stage and screen to make her way in the world. Yet Mrs. Koide’s past remains enigmatic throughout the film. From her delusional episodes, it seems that rumors of her reputation spoiled a proposal of marriage. However, much like trying to construct the truth from bits of gossip, one can only piece together an approximation of what may have happened, but it is never made entirely clear.

In the midst of her budding relationship with Mrs. Koide, Naomi also grapples with the exasperating tag-along companionship of her simple-minded cousin Yumi; an ill-fated tryst with Masaru, a local delivery boy; and the love/hate feelings she harbors toward her mother. Over the course of the summer however, Naomi acquires a sense of acceptance and belonging. She learns humility and grace. She learns to sit still, to endure the passage of time. And for the first time in her life, she learns what it means to love.

All the requisite elements come together to create the magic that is Firefly Dreams. The film’s dual settings cast a striking contrast between the savoir-faire chic of urban life in Nagoya, and the stifling tedium of provincial life in Horaicho. Deliberate pacing evokes the feeling of a lazy summer in the country, and the soundtrack hums with chirping cicada and the ambient sounds of nature to produce a palpably realistic backdrop for the lush cinematography of Yoshinobu Hayano. Music director Paul Rowe has overlaid each scene with a musical motif: a fecund guitar track for the carefree feeling of youth, the gravity and pathos of the piano for Mrs. Koide’s waning twilight days, and a heartfelt blend of both instruments in the Japanese pentatonic scale as the film draws toward its lovingly crafted conclusion.

John Williams is indeed a talent to watch as his star rises upon the horizon of independent filmmaking. And if the firefly is a symbol of inspiration and hope, then Firefly Dreams has already set the heavens ablaze.

Rice Paper Summer Rolls with Grilled Basa and Mango

Every time I make Southeast Asian cuisine, I always make a variation of these light and lovely rice paper rolls. For these, I grilled filets of basa (a Mekong Delta catfish) to add to the fillings of spring greens, fresh mint, grated carrot, and julienne cucumbers. And the flavors of Asian fish sauce, lime juice and rice vinegar in the dipping sauce complete the dish.

Spicy Lime Dipping Sauce:
1/4 cup rice vinegar
1/4 cup Asian fish sauce
1/4 cup lime juice
1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon sugar
3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1 small knob of gingerroot, peeled and finely shredded (about 1 tablespoon)
1 small red chili pepper, trimmed, seeded and minced
1/4 cup crushed peanuts

Mix all ingredients together in a jar with a tight-fitting lid. Shake vigorously and allow to stand for one hour, or overnight. Serve in a shallow dish for dipping Rice Paper Spring Rolls.

Spring Rolls:
1/2 pound basa filets, grilled and coarsely chopped
2 ripe mangos, peeled and thinly sliced lengthwise
1 small bunch of mint leaves, finely chopped
2 cups spring greens
12 rice paper wrappers

Divide each of the fillings into 12 equal portions. Fill a large, shallow dish with warm water and soak a rice paper wrapper until softened. Carefully transfer the wrapper to a dinner plate. Place one portion of each summer roll filling in compact layers on the lower half of the wrapper, leaving the edges empty for tucking and rolling. Fold the lower edge of the wrapper up and gently snuggle it around the filling. Fold in the left and right sides of the wrapper toward the center and roll cigar-style toward the upper edge. Cut roll in half on a diagonal angle, and place on an attractive serving dish. Repeat with the remaining wrappers and filling. Serve with Spicy Lime Dipping Sauce. Serves 4.

Thai Green Curry Chicken

Green Curry Paste:
2 stalks lemongrass, trimmed and thinly sliced
2 green jalapeno chilies, deseeded and coarsely chopped
1 small bunch cilantro (about 1 cup)
1 knob ginger root, peeled and chopped (about 2 tablespoons)
4 cloves garlic, peeled and trimmed
1 large shallot, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon coriander
1 tablespoon nam pla (Asian fish sauce)
2 limes, juice only
2 tablespoons peanut oil
¼ cup water (as needed)
Combine all ingredients except water in the bowl of a food processor. Puree mixture to a fine paste, adding water a little at a time as needed for thorough blending and uniform consistency.

Curry:
1 tablespoon peanut oil
2 pounds boneless chicken breasts or thighs, cut into 1″ pieces
1 small onion, peeled and thinly sliced
Green Curry Paste
2 cups chicken stock
1 can coconut milk
2 jalapeno peppers, deseeded and thinly sliced
2 limes, cut into wedges

Heat oil in a large kettle or wok. Add chicken and onion and stir-fry until lightly browned. Add curry paste and stir thoroughly to mix. Stir in chicken stock and bring to a simmer. Reduce heat and simmer for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally, until chicken is tender and sauce is thickened. Add coconut milk and jalapenos and continue simmering for about 15 minutes, until peppers are just tender. Serve with steamed rice, garnished with fresh cilantro and lime wedges. Serves 4.

Cambodian Lettuce Wraps with Mahogany Pork Ribs

Curry Paste:
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 knob gingerroot, peeled and coarsely chopped (about 1 tablespoon)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Curry Pork Ribs:
2 pounds boneless pork ribs, cut into chunks
1 tablespoon cornstarch dissolved in 1/4 cup water
1 head red leaf lettuce, washed and trimmed into individual leaves

Combine marinade ingredients in a mixing bowl. Add pork, cover and refrigerate for 4 hours, or overnight. Wrap pork and marinade in aluminum foil. Preheat oven to 275. Roast foil-wrapped pork for 2 hours. When pork is done, drain marinade into a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, add cornstarch mixture and stir until thickened. Preheat oven broiler. Transfer pork to a foil-lined baking sheet. Brush pork with thickened marinade and broil until browned and lightly charred. Repeat brushing and turning to evenly brown and char on all sides. Remove from the oven, allow to cool and serve with lettuce leaves.

“Very early in my life it was too late. At eighteen it was already too late. I aged. This aging was brutal. It spread over my features, one by one. I saw this aging of my face with the same sort of interest I might have taken, for example, in the reading of a book. That new face, I kept it. It’s kept the same contours, but it’s like it is destroyed. I have a destroyed face.”

Thus begins The Lover. And if ever a story leapt from the pages of a novel and onto the silver screen, this languid and sultry film adaptation of the best-selling book by Marguerite Duras does indeed. Set against the backdrop of French colonial Vietnam, with all the faith and fervor of its native text, The Lover reveals the intimacies and intricacies of a clandestine romance between a pubescent girl from a financially strapped French family and a much older and much wealthier Chinese man. Overlaid with softly indulgent narration by the nonpareil Jeanne Moreau, a provocative Jane March stars in the role of the young Marguerite, with Tony Leung as her refined but reticent paramour.

The year is 1929, and a nameless girl, whom we must presume to be the author in the bloom of her youth, is traveling by ferry across the Mekong Delta, on return from a holiday at her family home in the village of Sadec, to her boarding school in Saigon. Self-aware and oozing with nubile allure, this woman-child is at once both tenderly naïve and wise beyond her years. Most telling is the way in which she is dressed, and an evocative passage from the pages of the novel that describes it is brought to life by the microcosmic eye of cinematographer Robert Fraisse:

“I’m wearing a dress of real silk, but it’s threadbare, almost transparent. It used to belong to my mother…It’s a sleeveless dress with a very low neck. It’s the sepia color real silk takes on with wear. It’s a dress I remember. I think it suits me. I’m wearing a leather belt with it, perhaps a belt belonging to one of my brothers…This particular day I must be wearing the famous pair of gold lamé high heels. I can’t see any others I could have been wearing, so I’m wearing them…Going to school in evening shoes decorated with diamanté flowers… These high heels are the first in my life, they’re beautiful, they’ve eclipsed all the shoes that went before…

It’s not the shoes, though, that make the girl look so strangely dressed. No, it’s the fact that she’s wearing a man’s flat-brimmed hat, a brown fedora with a broad black ribbon…No woman, no girl wore a man’s fedora in that colony then…What must have happened is: I try it on for fun, look at myself in the shop-keeper’s glass, and see that there, beneath the man’s hat, the thin awkward shape, the inadequacy of childhood has turned into something else. Has ceased to be a harsh, inescapable imposition of nature. Has become on the contrary, a provoking choice of nature, a choice of the mind… Suddenly I see myself as another, as another would be seen, outside myself, available to all, available to all eyes, in circulation for cities, journeys, desire.”

The eyes of desire that fixate upon her are those of the son of a Chinese business magnate, a young man of infinite means and heir to a tidy fortune. Intuiting the opportunity that lay before her, the girl does not hesitate to accept a ride back to town in the back of his chauffeured limousine, wherein the affaire du coeur begins with an achingly subtle moment in which his pinky finger, ever so slightly and oh so gently, grazes the skin of her hand, resting on the seat next to him. Over time, however, as the two grow more intimately acquainted, nuance gives way to salacious and unmitigated obsession, as he unleashes his pent-up inhibitions and loses himself in the pleasures of this unaffected and unabashed young woman.

“The lover from Cholon is so accustomed to the adolescence of the white girl, he’s lost. The pleasure he takes in her every evening has absorbed all his time, all his life. He scarcely speaks to her any more. Perhaps he thinks she won’t understand any longer what he’d say about her, about the love he never knew before and of which he can’t speak.”

Throughout the film, Jeanne Moreau’s melodic narration echoes perfectly the hypnotic singsong of Marguerite Duras, as each line of prose crochets itself onward with a thread from the one before it, eventually to reveal the implicit impossibilities of a happily-ever-after for the ill-fated lovers. Compelled by the circumstances of her upbringing, this girl, the daughter of a bankrupt, manic-depressive widow, is newly awakened to the impending and all-too-real task of making her way alone in the world. Thus, she measures her lover only by the depth of his pockets, while her spineless roué, a victim of his own brand of cultural and parental circumstances, impotently accedes to the dictum of his disapproving father.

“She doesn’t know how long it was after the white girl left that he obeyed his father’s orders, married as he was told to do the girl the families had chosen ten years ago, a girl dripping, like the rest, with gold, diamonds, jade.”

Yet for her lover, there was never any question of the depth and sincerity of his love for the young French girl, then and always. “It was as before…he still loved her, he could never stop loving her… he’d love her unto death.”

But it wasn’t until much later, until it was too late, that the girl acknowledged to herself her true feelings.

“The burst of Chopin under a sky lit up with brilliancies…There wasn’t a breath of wind and the music spread all over the dark boat, like a heavenly injunction whose import was unknown, like an order from God whose meaning was inscrutable…and afterwards, she wept because she thought of the man from Cholon and suddenly she wasn’t sure she hadn’t loved him with a love she hadn’t seen because it had lost itself in the affair like water in sand and she rediscovered it only now, through this moment of music flung across the sea.”

With the moodiness of film noir and tout d’élégance of a bygone era, director Jean-Jacques Arnaud and cinematographer Robert Fraisse paint with remarkable authenticity the succulent landscape of South Vietnam, with its imposing yet oddly congruous French colonial veneer; and the intimacy and pathos of The Lover is enhanced and integrated with the delicate redolence of a musical score by Gabriel Yared, punctuated by strains from Frédéric Chopin’s Waltz in B-minor. The result: a seductive masterpiece of cinematic grace and beauty.

In both the novel and in real life, the jilted and lovelorn Marguerite Duras traveled by steamship to France, where she studied law and political science at the Sorbonne. Upon her graduation in 1935, she worked as a secreraty at the Ministry of Colonies until 1941, and shortly thereafter, published her first book, Les Impudents, in 1942. Duras served as a member of French Resistance during World War II, in which she lays claim to the rescue of French President François Mitterand during his days as resistance fighter. After the war, Duras worked as a journalist for several magazines, including the Observateur. She later joined the Communist Party, but was expelled for condemning its policies and lobbying for revisionism in 1950.

Around that same time, she wrote and published three more novels: Un Barrage Contre Le Pasifique, depicting the struggles of a poor French family in Indochina, Le Marin De Gibraltar, a cerebral romantic work, and Le Square, an abstract literary work for which she was indoctrinated into the New Novel Group.

Marguerite Duras went on to write 30 more novels, and from there, it was a short leap into the world of film. With a lifetime total of 38 credits to her name, Duras wrote numerous screenplays, directed more than a dozen films, appeared in ten, and adapted several of her novels for the cinema. Hiroshima Mon Amour, the story of a wartime love affair between a French actress and a Japanese architect, received an Academy Award nomination, and in 1975, Duras won France’s highest cinematic honor, the Cinema Academy Grand Prix for her film India Song.

And although The Lover chronicles some of the earliest days of her youth, the book was written over the course of four short months in 1984, when Marguerite Duras was nearly seventy years old. Nevertheless, this autobiographical recollection won her France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, and sold more 1.5 million copies.

Plagued by alcoholism and chronic health problems, Marguerite Duras lived out the remaining years of her life in Paris in the company of Yann Andréa Steiner, a writer and actor 38 years her junior, until her death from cancer on November 3, 1996. Throughout their tempestuous 16-year relationship, Steiner wrote two books about the life of Marguerite Duras, M.D. and Cet Amour Lá, which was adapted for the cinema in 2001, with Jeanne Moreau once again in the role of the aging writer.

Marguerite Duras holds a place of accomplishment and prestige that few have achieved in the realm of both literature and film. Yet, in a passage from The Lover, Duras confesses, “What I wanted more than anything else in the world was to write, nothing else but that, nothing…”

And write… she did.

The Lover is available in both VHS and DVD format, and the paperback English translation is still in print.

Every year since 1994, my son Will and I have spent Christmas Eve together. There have been times throughout those years that we joined in social gatherings, but in recent years, it’s been just the two of us. I make a gourmet dinner and we open Christmas gifts.

This year’s menu is Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp (Will’s favorite), Vietnamese Roast Pork Loin, Bok Choy Stir-Fry, and Coconut Crème Brulee. And by evening’s end, I’m hoping that my *Christmas Wish* comes true…

May 2005:
I just finished cooking, photographing and sampling [REVELING IN!] my very first attempt at Kung Pao…and Sweet Mother of God! it was far and away the best Chinese food I have ever made, nay, dare I say it?… the best Chinese food I’ve ever EATEN! Words cannot describe the perfect peppery spice and velvety texture of the sauce, the lingering crispness of the fresh vegetables, and the pearl-pink luxury of the extra large prawns. The only thing missing was someone to share it with. While my new and improved monthly cooking agenda is much more relaxed, with it spread evenly throughout the month instead of happening in an all-in-one stress-fest each time, but sometimes I find mysef all alone in the kitchen preparing and sampling the most sumptuous of dishes.

And having had a little time to reflect on why this particular recipe turned out so much better than any other I’ve made, I think it’s all about CONTROL. And for a Type-A gal like myself, that’s music to my ears. Just last week, on a whim, I made a wok-ful of stir-fry vegetables to serve with Grilled Chinese Five Spice Pork Loin. And while it was delicious, since I just tossed everything together in the wok with out measuring or planning, I was somewhat disappointed at how lackluster the fresh vegetables turned out. And I know from experience how easy it is to mishandle and overcook delicate prawns. So this time, I took a totally different approach.

I washed and chopped all the fresh vegetables in advance and had them standing ready to add to the stir-fry at just the right moment. The prawns were deveined with the shells intact, and I mixed up the Kung Pao sauce ahead of time, instead of adding all the ingredients separately to the busy stir-fry and trying to get the balance right on-the-fly.

To start, I put a little sesame oil in the wok and stir-fried the prawns in the shell until they were just pink but not completely done, knowing that they would cook a little more when all the Kung Pao components came together. At just the right moment, I removed them from the wok and set them aside on a plate. Next I added all the chopped vegetables and stir-fried them until they were just beginning to get tender, which is precisely the moment I chose to add the pre-mixed Kung Pao sauce. As soon as the sauce began to thicken, I added water a little at a time until it reached just the right velvety consistency. To finish, I turned off the heat under the wok, added the still-warm prawns and tossed with the vegetables and sauce just enough to coat and integrate them into the gestalt of the dish.

The Result: Kung Pao WOW! Here’s the Recipe:

Kung Pao Shrimp

1 pound large shrimp, cleaned and deveined, shells intact
1 can water chestnuts, chopped
2 scallions, thinly sliced
1 carrot, thinly sliced
2 stalks celery, thinly sliced
1 clove garlic, finely minced
1/4 cup unsalted cashews or peanuts
1 tsp Chinese chili garlic sauce
3 tablespoons sesame oil
1 cup water (more or less as needed)
Steamed Rice

Kung Pao Sauce:
2 teaspoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons water
3 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tbsp. rice wine
2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons sesame oil
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon ginger, finely grated

Combine all sauce ingredients in bowl and set aside. Wash, trim and chop all fresh ingredients and set aside. Heat 3 tablespoons of sesame oil in a wok. Add shrimp and stir-fry until just pink but not completely done and set them aside on a plate.

Add all the chopped vegetables and nuts to the wok and stir-fry until just tender. Add the Kung Pao sauce and toss with vegetables to coat. When sauce begins to thicken, add water a little at a time until the sauce reaches a velvety consistency, being careful not to overcook the vegetables. To finish, turn off the heat under the wok, add the prawns and toss with the vegetables and sauce just enough to coat and integrate them into the stir fry. Serve with steamed rice.

Tradition. It is the glue that holds families, and even entire cultures together. It is the tie that binds one generation to the next, and it is the foundation for a charming cinematic valentine, The Road Home.

Known in Chinese as Wo De Fu Qin Mu Qin, The Road Home is based upon a novel titled Remembrance, and is directed by Zhang Yimou, also known for his films Raise the Red Lantern, Ju Dou, Red Sorghum, Hero, and House of Flying Daggers. The Road Home stars Ziyi Zhang, who also appeared in Hero and House of Flying Daggers, but may be best known for her role in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

The story is set in the remote village of Sanhetun, China, where the aged widow Zhao Di awaits the arrival of her son Luo Yusheng from Hong Kong. He has come to help his mother with the funeral arrangements of his father, Luo Changyu, the village schoolteacher who has died of heart failure while traveling from village to village in the dead of winter, raising funds to rebuild the schoolhouse.

Chinese culture has many traditions associated with the funeral process and the honoring of departed ancestors. One of the most important traditions is ensuring that their spirits are able to find their way home in the afterlife. Therefore, the widow Zhao Di insists that the body of her husband be carried from the neighboring village where he died, along the road that leads to Sanhetun, so that his spirit does not forget the way home. Luo Changyu had devoted his life to educating the children of Sanhetun, and had died trying to ensure that his legacy would continue. He deserved nothing less.

Recognizing the futility of trying to talk her into a more practical means of transporting the body of his father, Luo Yusheng dutifully accedes to his mother’s wishes. However, they face one major hurdle: There aren’t enough strong young men left in the village to carry the body of his father such a long distance. So Luo Yusheng will have to hire a dozen men from a neighboring village to do the job, and provide them with food, whiskey, and chairs for resting along the way, at a cost that will empty his wallet. The widow Zhao Di also wants to weave a shroud for her husband’s coffin, which will require that Luo Yusheng pay for the repair of an ancient loom for the task.

Once the funeral arrangements are set in motion, and his mother is ensconced at her loom, Luo Yusheng has a few quiet moments to look over his father’s personal effects, among them a photograph of his parents, taken the year they were married. The story of their courtship was known to all in the village, and one that Luo Yusheng had heard many times over.

Until now, the story has been told in black and white. But the moment Luo Yusheng begins to reminisce, it comes alive in a burst of Technicolor, with a lovely and youthful Zhao Di waiting in a golden meadow with her fellow villagers for the arrival of the new schoolteacher. And as the most beautiful maiden in the village, Zhao Di has been assigned the task of weaving a bright red banner to hang in the new schoolhouse for good luck.

It’s love at first sight for Zhao Di and Luo Changyu, although Zhao Di has had many suitors, none of whom met with her mother’s approval. In the first days after Luo Changyu’s arrival, Zhao Di never misses an opportunity to catch a glimpse of him. And each day, she lovingly prepares a hot meal, which she delivers to the construction site where the new schoolhouse is being built, in hopes that Luo Changyu will choose it for his lunch from among the many dishes brought by the other women of the village. It has also been decided that the new schoolteacher will dine with a different family each evening, and when Zhao Di’s turn comes to have Luo Changyu for dinner, she is nearly beside herself with anticipation.

Despite her mother’s misgivings that the schoolteacher is above their family’s humble station in life, all seems rosy, and love blossoms between Zhao Di and Luo Changyu, until one day when Zhao Di learns that Luo Changyu must return to the city for questioning. The year is 1958. China is in the throes of political upheaval and it seems that there is some question regarding the young man’s allegiances. But before he departs, Luo Changyu gives Zhao Di a tortoise-shell barrette as a token of his affection, with a promise to return in a few weeks time.

Zhao Di waits in utter despair as the day of Luo Changyu’s return comes and goes with no sign of him. When she can stand it no longer, she defiantly sets out in a snowstorm to track him down in the city. One of the villagers finds her collapsed on the road and brings her back home, where she is taken deathly ill. When Luo Changyu hears the news, he returns without permission to be by her side, an act of disobedience that costs the two lovers another two years of separation. But when Luo Changyu finally returns to Sanhetun, the two are never parted again…until his death. And that is how the road to Sanhetun became a symbol of their love.

When the story finally returns to the day of Luo Changyu’s funeral procession down the long road home, the unexpected turnout of mourners, and Luo Yusheng’s tribute to his father the following day will surely melt even a heart of stone.