Les Crawfish

by Gerald Michael Rolfe


Crawfish! Crawdads! Mudbugs! Hoooya!

I eat 'em hot and I eat 'em cold. I eat 'em fried and I eat 'em boiled. Put 'em in etouffee or put 'em in jambalaya. Put 'em in a pie or put 'em in a basket. Au gratin, cocktail, boudin and bisque -- it's all good, sweet thang -- put 'em up any way at all, just so long as you put them up!

The crawfish is the capital A in Authentic when cajun is the cuisine du jour. Cook 'em how you will and call 'em what you must, but these incomparable delicacies are the very soul of good down-home Louisiana cookin'. I love my mudbugs best when they're boiled whole in spices and served with a boatload of melted butter. Eating crawfish this way is a juice-down-the-chin, soggy-fingered good time! Whether gathered around the picnic table with family and friends at a bayou barbecue, or dining casually on a Bourbon street balcony at Patout's, nothing is more quintessentially cajun than a big steaming plate of crawfish in the middle of the spread.

While 'proper' etiquette is not my strong point, I defer to good manners when eating crawfish. I pick one of the hot little buggers gingerly off the plate and break it in half. Then, while letting the scrumptious tail drop temporarily to my plate (paper or fine china), and per strict adherence to custom, I place the broken end of the head to my lips, squeeze firmly, and suck the ever-loving goodness of lagniappe onto my joyful palate. Mmmm, the provocative zing and seductive aroma of cayenne, garlic, onion and white pepper, all intermarried with the animal goodness of god knows what's in that head! I am, at that cajun-inspired moment, in a state of gastronomic bliss.

Not one for extended reverie, however, when a full plate of food beckons, I immediately begin stripping away the shell from the tail on my plate. As the flavorful explosion from the head mellows into a happy satisfaction on my tongue, I dunk the coral and white tail into melted butter and then pop it quickly into my mouth. Ohhh, what a country! The texture of lobster, the flavor of New Orleans, the satisfying luxuriance of wonderful food!

Once started, the knowlegeably well-mannered partaker of boiled crawfish must continue to pluck the little darlings from the community plate and repeat the ritual of squeeze, suck, peel, dip and chew until either the food is gone or the appetite is sated (it had better be the latter!). This is why I come to dine. This is why life is splendid, and why living it is a gift.

And don't you dare worry about calories! This is why God and the cajuns invented zydeco. Dance it off, cher! If you loves yer baby like a pig love corn, then we gon' pass a good time! Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Mmmmmmmushrooms!

by Gerald Michael Rolfe

"Silver and gold and a fine cloak -- these are easy to send with a messenger. To trust him with mushrooms -- that is difficult!" --Martial

I adore mushrooms! If there is anything more voluptuously decadent in the vegetable world, I have yet to feel its flesh yielding to my teeth. And if there is anything more triumphantly vigorous, I bow my head in awe.

Mushrooms are sprung from nooks and crevices. They are the nubile fruits of the forest's fetid underbelly. Rising up silently in eerie, primordial darkness, mushrooms are as pregnant with mystery as they are delicious. I eye the mushroom respectfully. I understand that for every luscious mouthful of chantarelle or crimini lies a bed of amanitopsis vaginata, seductive and deadly. But like fugu, that is part of the allure. Life and death is separated by nothing more than a gatherer's err in judgement. (or in the case of Emperor Claudius, an angry wife!) Life's bounteous celebration is rendered more piquant by the unutterable proximity of its antithesis.

And oh are mushrooms delicious! Woe be to the cuisine devoid of mushrooms! Stroganoff without them would be nothing more than a mundane, gravied beef. Foie gras sans truffles would be the most banal of liver spreads. The flavor of mushrooms, from subtle to scintillating, can be an acquired taste. Children will often spit them out. Even dogs notorious for gobbling up table scraps will sometimes give a mushroom a second sniff. But like all the best things in life, the acquired taste is the most enduring. The earthy, nutlike flavor of a porcini conjures images of wood-sprites dancing upon my tongue. The pungent insouisance of the black truffle would compel me nonetheless were it common as crab grass. Morels make me ravenous for more morels! White caps beg me to slice them and smother a pizza! To taste a mushroom is to taste the earth that Apollo never sees. It is the very tang and smack of nature's teeming night.

Even moreso than the varied flavor, though, it is the mushroom's texture that I crave. The woodear's hyper-labial extravagance is a blessing to any sauce priveleged enough to nestle in its crannies. I rejoice in the chewy, almost resistant nature of its flesh. The melt-on-your-palate delicacy of oyster mushrooms is sinfully perfect in its innocence. The firm-fleshed portabella is like an unrelenting and generous lover. And the enoki, my personal favorite, pops pleasingly when chewed, its slender stems and small, round caps evoking a sensation of epicureal androgyny, as if eating them was an act carnivourous and herbivorous at once. Mushrooms, in all their many shapes and textures, feel good to the mouth. Whether stuffed, marinated, or sauteed, they can be counted upon to lend their satisfying fleshiness to the flavor of everything from tarragon balsamic vinegarette to Maryland blue crab. They are, more than the lowly soybean ever dreamed of being, the vegetable that would be meat.

And so I adore them. Prone to flights of absurd imagination, I see mushrooms under Diana's moonlit feet. I see the place of faeries and wood-nymphs and taste their energy in every splendid morsel of that which grows, unmolested by sunlight, in their midst. But for all my Romantic foolishness, I share the essential humid desire of all living things. The same green-fuse force which drives my passion for living also pushes mushrooms into being from the murky rot of the forest floor. It's probably not a coincidence, then, that this same force makes me eat them.

http://www.geraldmichaelrolfe.com
http://actualthought.blogspot.com

A Window Table

by Gerald Michael Rolfe









Put me on a portico overlooking Bar Harbor and I'm loaded for lobster. Deposit me on a deck in Lahaina and let the wahine-watching begin.

I'm a fan of the window table. I absolutely love a dinner with a view. Be it the Brown Pelican in Cedar Key, Millard's At The Summit in Borodino, or the Whale's Tail in Channel Islands Harbor, nothing (save an attractive companion) goes better with filet and cabernet than the panorama of the natural world.

It isn't just about the food. When I eat out I am on an excursion of the senses. I feel an almost mystical oneness with the universe when I suck a sweet oyster from its shell while watching a gull do the same on the rocks below my perch. Salad is anything but just salad when my eyes are simultaneously treated to lavish displays of bougainvillea, crepe myrtle and palm. It's as if the whole vegetable kingdom is conspiring together to make my experience sublime.

When I savor the broiled snapper, the hunter inside me radiates with appreciation at the dive-bombing relentlessness of pelicans crashing into the bay for their own fresh catch. How much more fortunate, though, that I am a man. While the pelican must be content to swallow his fish whole, I get to chew every exquisite bite!

As window tables go, is there anything more perfect for the evening than a west-facing view over water? When the last of the dinner plates are taken away, I feel an abiding peace as the color of sunset paints my companion's face. The velvety richness of a cardomom creme brulee becomes a gastronomic echo of the subtle orange and red and grey of ebbing day, as if everything in the world is kissing everything else all at once. Conversation comes in effortless murmurs of affection and appreciation. Dessert yields to coffee as the last drops of daylight yield to night. The seamless transition of raucous day into romantic night is once again complete.

Evening coffee and an aperitif at the window table is a delight in its own right. Faraway lights, especially on boats gliding past, make me think of mystery and adventure. In answer, candlelight within conjures mystery and adventure of its own as it casts a beguiling sparkle upon goblets and jewelry and lipstick.

I melt like drawn butter when I think of holding hands under the cozy table as other lovers stroll along a lamplit path next to the shore. It's time to pay the tab and do a little strolling of my own. It's good to be in love with life, especially when I can love it from the window table.

http://www.geraldmichaelrolfe.com
http://actualthought.blogspot.com

Defending Omnivorism

I have a problem with vegetarianism. It's not that I'm unsympathetic to vegetarians. Au contraire! It's that they're unsympathetic to me.

I'm not compelled to hurl moral sanctimony and fury at those who would have me eat tofu rather than swine flesh. I'll never march in front of a chic vegetarian cafe carrying a sign that hollers "Save The Pig Farmers: Eat Ribs!" In fact, you may even find me dining within that very same establishment. I'd start with a nice Andalusian Gazpacho, add a light Canary Island Summer Salad, then move on to the Roasted Ratatouille with Basil Aioli before finishing with a delicate soymilk flan. Delicious! I think vegetarians are generally wonderful, sensitive people. I even respect their moral commitment to abstain from eating meat, fish, dairy, and so on. Why, my very own still beloved former spouse was a diligent vegetarian for the better part of 10 years!

No, I do not seek converts. Nor do I cast aspersions upon the cuisine of those who would be ruminants. It's simply this: I love my little place here in the food chain, and I'm not inclined to deviate from what seems to be a very popular plan of nature (vegetarians who own cats know what I'm talking about). When it's time to eat, rather than define the parameters of my fare by what I cannot eat, as do vegetarians, I let the animal inside me choose what is good. Chicken is good. Fried, broiled, roasted and grilled. Steak is good. Seared, bbq'd, broiled and flambeed. Pork is succulent as roasts and ribs, cooked underground on coals at a luau or stir-fried with mushrooms and scallions and water chestnuts. Lobster, shrimp, oysters -- delectable! Turkey smoked, roasted, and tetrazzinized! Christmas goose and Duck a'la Orange! Wild game makes me wild! Venison, rabbit and moose, oh my!

Please, dear friend, forgive me my excesses, as I forgive the excesses of those who trespass against meat merchants. It's just that there is a fundamental part of me that believes I am of the animals, not above the animals. Several million years' worth of my ancestors have eaten meat and fish and eggs and milk. I have incisors and canine teeth for tearing meat, a belly that digests it and makes me strong. My very salivary glands go into overdrive at the sight of roasting fowl or a large cut of beef. To ignore this essential nature of my appetite would be a denial of the most grievous kind. I am a human being. I am made to eat meat.

Perhaps I'm a fool to believe that I am just one of earth's creatures. Perhaps I should take a lesson from my earnest friends who see my role as shepherd and overseer of the earth. Perhaps. But if I am a fool, I'm in very good company. Whales and dolphins and baby seals eat copious amounts of seafood. Spotted owls and bald eagles feed on small warm-blooded animals. Everywhere in glorious nature, of which I am a living part, we see hunters and prey, and the prey of prey, and so on. How fortunate we are, as omnivores, to choose from so wide a menu! I begrudge no one their pursuit of physical and moral purity via the exclusive ingestion of vegetable matter. And I thank those folks, in advance, for not begrudging me the opportunity to slink back into my cave and gnaw on a tasty rib.

Gerald Michael Rolfe
http://actualthought.blogspot.com