Bon Appegeek

This post started as a serious essay on the cult of health among Asians, Koreans especially. After some research, I decided it would be better as an essay on endangered plants like wild ginseng that have been harvested to near extinction by overzealous Asians obsessed with the supposed health benefits. People like my parents often illegally searched for wild ginseng on protected parklands just to get their fix, never mind that it was becoming harder to find, never mind the future. Then I realized that this wasn’t fair, that every culture has its flaws, that taking care of the environment is a multi-faceted problem that obviously has its roots in the acts of every nation, ethnicity, and human being on our rapidly-dying planet dear God will our children live in a vast Sahara with only tumbleweed for food? WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!

It wasn’t a very funny topic. So I was glad when I remembered that I (try to) write a humor blog, not a blog that makes people poke out their eyes in despair (I try). I’ll leave it to the rest of the Internet to provide you with your eye-poking needs. We might be running out of wild ginseng, but we are NOT running out of eye-poke sites.

There’s a large jar of 20-year-old honey in my parents’ basement. Gnarled, ancient roots of ginseng are buried in the honey, now hardened into nearly black crystals. It’s too valuable to eat. I think my mom planned to bequeath the jar to her future great-grandchildren with instructions to them to bequeath it to their future great-grandchildren.

She caught a terrible cold recently. Since honey had been in the news as an effective treatment for coughs, I hauled the dirty jar upstairs, washed it, and set it in a pan of hot water to dissolve. Whether ginseng really is a tonic or has any health benefits, I can’t say—the literature seems mixed. But I never underestimate the power of the placebo on a Korean woman who believes in the mythic properties of ginseng. (I do know that it can raise blood pressure, so I avoid it. My mom’s blood pressure is low.)

I expected her to argue and wring her hands over my daring to touch the sacred honey, but she didn’t. She ate it and she liked it. She really liked it. I think she’s secretly glad that she got sick and had an excuse to eat it. Maybe she was even faking being sick.

She’s better now, but she keeps dipping into the jar. Ha ha ha. Screw the great-grandkids. Screw the children.

Let’s say you’re a woman who never wears hats. One day you spot an outrageously stylish hat, the kind of hat Hollywood startlets from the forties wore when they put their handprints in that sidewalk wherever it is where they do the handprint thing while flashbulbs popped and adoring fans cried at how fabulous they looked in the hat. You buy the hat forgetting that your normal daily wear is ripped jeans and a faded t-shirt you bought from The Onion ten years ago. As soon as you see yourself in the mirror in this hat it hits you: You have no business wearing this hat, anything like this hat, or anything in the remote family of this hat. You dweeb.

Food styling is my fancy hat. My pictures usually end up worse when I mess with the dish too much than when I leave it alone. So I do a minimum of arranging, focus on the natural state of the food, and hope one of the shots comes out okay. Besides, I’m hungry, and I don’t feel like eating cold, congealed food (unless it’s pudding).

Then I saw this intriguing recipe for Tuna and Goat Cheese Tartare in Anne Willan’s Good Food No Fuss and tried the damned hat on again. Willan describes this dish, a creation of Australian Chef Tetsuya Wakuda, as a combination of Asian and Western flavors “to brilliant effect.” I had a vision—food styling! presentation!—of the tartar molded with a criss-cross of chives on top.

In my head, the smooth disk of tartare had distinct red tuna and alabaster squares of goat cheese. On the plate, the disk ended up ragged, the tuna paled to pink, and the goat cheese dissolved into white smears. If my family had been around, they would have started making fun of me around the third time I picked up the chives, wiped them off, then repositioned them. Then they would have called me a dweeb or its Korean equivalent. Babo (바보), maybe.

But never mind my herb-arrangement skills. The tartare is rich from the tuna and cheese, almost too rich. It would be great served alongside warm grilled fruit like pineapple or melon to counter the richness and provide a temperature contrast. A squeeze of orange juice in the dressing might be a good touch too. I spooned it on romaine leaves with a side of crusty bread. Endives or sesame crackers would go just as well.

TUNA AND GOAT CHEESE TARTARE

Adapted from Good Food No Fuss, by Anne Willan
Serves 2-3 as an appetizer

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Why is there a picture of a cat on a food blog on St. Patrick’s Day? Moreover (if you’re the type of person who uses the word ‘moreover,’ which I’m not, except just now), why does the picture include an oxalis plant which isn’t even a real shamrock?”

Good questions. First, note that the cat is a redhead, a sure sign of Irish blood, if I ever saw one. You can’t tell from this picture, but he has green eyes too, and they’re a smilin’. Second, I’ve always loved the dainty oxalis plant and the shimmery purple undersides of the triangular leaves. The little white flowers constantly bloom, never failing to add pleasure to my day. Aside from the counter where my cobalt blue Artisan KitchenAid mixer sits, it’s the brightest spot in my home.

Imagine my shock when I came home one day to an overturned pot and a pile of dirt. Not one leaf, flower, or stem remained. My cats had eaten the entire plant, including the roots. Oxalis, it turns out, is not just a pretty flowering houseplant, it’s THE GREATEST CAT SALAD OF ALL TIME.

See? That’s food-related.

The best time to buy an oxalis is starting tomorrow, when stores slash the prices after the holiday. Keep them in a crowded pot and they’ll multiply like crazy. The more light they receive, the deeper the purple hue under the leaves will be. Oh, and either hang them up far away from your cats or provide a nice anchovy vinaigrette on the side. It wouldn’t hurt to keep a vacuum cleaner nearby either.