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

At the Produce Stand

"I'll bring you plums to-morrow
Fresh on their mother twigs,
Cherries worth getting;
You cannot think what figs
My teeth have met in,
What melons icy-cold
Piled on a dish of gold
Too huge for me to hold,
What peaches with a velvet nap,
Pellucid grapes without one seed"
--Christina Rosetti


It's great to be here! I move through the dirt-floored aisles with abandon. A basket sits by my feet, already overflowing with fresh sweet corn, eggplant and Granny Smith apples. I pick through the shallots and elephant garlic, inhaling their intoxicating bouquet. A glance to the left and my heart palpitates. I can hardly believe how gorgeous the mangos look today. I'll be squeezing them momentarily!

Shopping at the produce stand is delightful! Here, where twenty bucks and a cornucopious appetite yields a trunkload of treasure, I am a man overcome by the juiciness of nature! I feel as if I've stepped into a singles-bar for the tastebuds, where my every fickle desire is courted by possibility. Is that a cantaloupe looking my way? Should I should sidle up to that attractive display of vidalias? My my, doesn't that honeydew look sweet! Everywhere I cast my gaze there is the obscene nubility of fruit, and I'm irretrievably drawn to it.

I am not Graham Kerr or Emeril or Jeff Smith when I shop for produce. Rather than eyeing the bounty with the measured discretion of a merchant chef, I am more like Rosetti's Laura. I am seduced by the overwhelming sensuality around me. I am bewitched by the enticing array of Earth's offspring. Everywhere I look there are colors in profusion. The day-glo oranges and yellows and greens of citrus fruits! The deep, erotic reds of radishes and apples and beets! There are the wholesome earthtones of ginger and mushrooms, and exotic purple okras and string beans. Even virginal white eggplants sit innocently beside sinister black radishes. I fill baskets wantonly, never dreaming of using a scale!

And it isn't just the color that grabs me. An infinite variety of shapes and textures complement every nuance of hue. There are sumptuous lobes and fleshy expanses! Impressive globes or lavish clusters or long, firm tumescences! Profusions of fruitful exuberance are everywhere! If I want it rough I'll take coconuts and jicama. If soft and luscious suits my desire I'll take guava and avocado and papaya. Never mind the staid beauty of a Victorian still-life. Forget the button-down supermarket romaine hearts wrapped tightly behind fetishistic cellophane. Here instead are life's greatest works. Here, in the vegetable kingdom's teeming open-air brothel, are the orgiastic manifestations of nature's most unquenchable desire -- the will to procreate. My blood runs hotter and faster because I'm in its midst! I am Laura, lust-drunk with the sap of life.
But unlike Laura (and unencumbered by the Victorian castigation mantra scrolling through her head), I don't have to blame the imaginary come-ons of imaginary goblins for my predilection for produce. I'm comfortable with my appetites, and unrepentant. If it is the sweet, wet juiciness of a watermelon I crave, I simply endulge. If my fancy is for the exquisite liquid tartness of a mouthful of ripe raspberries, so be it. If being close to the ripeness and raucousness of fruit makes me salivate in sympathy with its life-force, I do not feel debased. I am in heaven! I answer the goblin call of "Come buy! Come buy!" with a simple, knowing "Yesss!"

At last I haul my treasures to the flaxen-haired girl behind her dilapidated cash register. "Oh! I love mangos too!" she says as she handles mine gently before placing them into the bottom of a bag. "Mmmm, and these strawberries are perfect!" We exchange healthy smiles and our eyes betray conspiratorially similar appetites. Ah, my fellow travelers are everywhere! Touching life. Craving it. Celebrating it. And here in the produce stand most of all.

Gerald Michael Rolfe
writer@geraldmichaelrolfe.com
http://www.geraldmichaelrolfe.com

Carrots!

To love the carrot is to love life. Crunchy and colorful, versatile and vivacious, carrots are the essential reminder of the fertility of mother earth. As long as there have been people with epicurean desires, there have been those of us enchanted by this subterranean treasure. Carrots come in a variety of shapes and sizes -- long and lean, short and stubby, sinewy and slender, even Siamese-twinned or almost completely round. But the classics shape is, if not quite phallic, certainly a pleasingly tapered and luxuriously long stretch of the most strikingly bold orange flesh to be found anywhere in nature.

True, the carrot is, essentially, just a root. But what a voluptuous root it is! Far larger than the fanciful greenery that it supports, the very size and shape of the carrot root bespeaks a vigorousness of character that is profound. Its sole raison d etre is to penetrate the hard and indifferent soil in search of nutrients, sustenance, and satisfaction, and this it does splendidly. So splendidly, in fact, that when we see a freshly washed bunch of carrots layed out on the misting tables at the local produce stand, the reaction we feel is almost indescribably visceral. That most primitive part of our human DNA, the part that deals with survival and instinct and striving, identifies elementally with that striving aspect of the carrots character that gives it its shape. And then, of course, as we have with everything since we were infants, we want to put it in our mouths and bite it.

Whether the roots of our affection for this noble vegetable spring from childhood memories of their Bugsbunnyesque munchability, or are instead the result of more adult and measured musings, it matters not. What is instead most important about our relationship with the carrot is simply this -- it is pleasing to the senses and we can eat it. And eat it we do! Fresh from the garden, raw and zesty. Stripped of its skin, still raw, and dipped in creamy ranch dressing. Grated and mixed into slaws. Plucked, sliced, or julienned, gently steamed then slathered with fresh butter. Or the babies, harvested lovingly, poached and served hot -- a little parsley, perhaps some celery seed and, voila! Carrots are so good that we even insist on putting them in rich cakes, smothered with cream cheese frosting. Carrot soup, honey-glazed carrots, carrot muffins, carrot marmalades and jams. Wash it all down with some carrot wine -- why there's even carrot jelly we can use to get a tan!

It's good to love the carrot. It means you're still alive. When dining out, disdain the fries, and eat just four or five. They say your eyes will prosper. Your soul will prosper too. But most of all eat them because it's what you want to chew.

Gerald Michael Rolfe
http://www.geraldmichaelrolfe.com