Rasam

Rasam. The brothy soup has almost no substance but more blast in the mouth than any dish I know.  Salty, spicy, sour, umami in equal proportions--the flavors converge and ignite. An Indian friend ordered it in a South Indian dosa restaurant years ago and I thought it too hot, but my taste buds have grown up, and now I ask for it, hoping even in North Indian restaurants where I know it would be out of place.

When I do get a chance to eat rasam, I approach it seriously.  This is not a comfort cup to sip casually like miso. I pause after each spoonful, catch my breath, and down some water or lassi, but to little avail. The fiery, tangy taste has seized my mouth. All I know is I’m distinctly uncomfortable and craving more.

I didn’t want to divide the archetypal taste into ingredients, but then I decided to try cooking it. My homey Indian cookbook called for tamarind, tomato, coconut, chile, black mustard, and an earthy yellow lentil called toor dal.  I trekked to a Berkeley Indian grocer, picked up the toor dal, followed directions, and blended it smooth, but the alchemy did not take place.  I tasted spicy and sour and salty and savory, but the flavors seemed lopsided. They would not ignite.

I'm not sure I want to know the secret. I like to be presented with a bowl of perfect synthesis.

Enough time to cut fruit

The time I felt luckiest on my trip to Hawaii was the half hour I spent puttering in the kitchen and cutting and arranging pineapple, papaya, apple banana, and cream apple.  The baby was sleeping, my husband was surfing, and my in-laws were coming over later to make us brunch.  I had finished all the chores I could think of. So I set about cutting the baby pineapple from the farmer's market, which turned out to be intensely sweet and tangy, almost excessively flavorful.  I did not neglect to sample. By comparison, the "strawberry" papaya was cool and quiet, but I liked the melting texture.  The apple banana seemed only slightly more firm and tangy than a regular banana, but the cream apple disconcerted me: milky, fibrous flesh with embedded gelatinous slivers that encased hard seeds. It didn't matter: the treat was not the taste so much as the encounter itself.  As I ate and cut and arranged layers of bright slices, I felt free, a consciousness exploring. I was alone but not lonely, working but only for pleasure. What I offered my family would be a pure gift.

Miracle of the purple yam

Beni imo.  Okinawan purple yam.  I crave this food first because of its color: a kind of blooming purple, a purple that blends with midnight indigo, a purple that glows at me when I slit open the drab pale brown skin.  The yam's taste and texture are miraculous too, especially when it starts to caramelize at the edges after long roasting.  The flesh is smooth, dense, sweet as dates.  I eat it with yogurt and cinnamon, or with salty black beans and coconut rice, but mostly I eat it plain, meal after meal, hot or cold.  Complete.  

The intensity of that purple makes me a little afraid, a little thrilled.  In the heart of my kitchen, my comforting routine, comes this acute beauty, the opposite of safety.